Camden County College Adjunct Faculty Federation

AFT 4965

www.ccc-aft.org

Unions Survive Pension Challenge

As a response to the extreme New Jersey state budget crisis, legislators led by Sen. Stephen Sweeney of Gloucester (District 3) and Sen. Barbara Buono introduced legislation that would drastically limit the pension rights of adjunct faculty. After an enormous effort put forth by AFT/NJ, Nick Yvonello and Steve Young of the College Council, and Bill Lipkin of NJSFT as well as others, a compromise bill, S1962, 1964, 1965, 1969, and 2077 was adopted which preserved adjunct pensions with several significant changes. The changes will not affect adjuncts who are already members of PERS.

 New hires will go into an Alternate Benefit Program, which is a tax sheltered defined contribution program for higher education. Members annually contribute 5% of base or contractual salary, matched by an 8% employer contribution to a tax-deferred investment account. Unlike PERS, where there is a ten-year period before a member can be vested, there is no such requirement in the state’s new Alternate Benefit Program.

Lobbying also convinced the legislature to allow adjuncts to combine income for the ABP from all the colleges at which they teach. Information about the new legislation, and the entire bill, can be found at the NJ State Legislature site at http://www.state.nj.us/treasury/pensions/fact38.htm.       

AFT Increases Dues

CCCAFF Dues Remain the Same

 

The national American Federation of Teachers voted for dues increases at their biennial convention approving a raise in dues for both 2008 and 2009. Despite substantial changes, the CCAFF Executive Board voted to hold dues for our members at the present rate if at all possible. (An attempt to raise the state dues of the New Jersey State Federation of Teachers was defeated at the NJSFT convention in April.)

 The membership of the American Federation of Teachers at the AFT convention in July approved a dues raise from $13.95/ per capita per month to $15.35/ per capita per month in 2008 and to $16.00/ per capita per month in 2009. The AFT increases add $2.05 per month or $24.60/per member per year by 2009.

 The Camden County College Adjunct Faculty Federation, at the annual meeting last spring, had discussed the possibility of a dues decrease, but the increases by the AFT make such a decrease impossible. The CCCAFF, however, does not want to pass the new increases on to the membership and hopes that negotiated raises along with careful fiscal management will be sufficient to offset the imposed dues increases.

Working together, we can make a difference!

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