This month, our AAUP chapters of the CCCS urge you to write to your U.S. representatives in support of federal legislation HR 1205, to repeal the Government Pension Offset (GPO) and the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP). Together, these federal provisions are devastating to CCCS adjunct faculty, especially, and need to be struck down.
Were you aware of how two Reagan-era
provisions (Government Pension Offset and Windfall Elimination Provision)
(GPO/WEP) unfairly impoverish CCCS adjunct faculty for the rest of their lives?
The two programs do not hurt CCCS career employees such as full-time faculty,
administrators, and staff. The six initials have life-altering and devastating
effects on workers who paid into Social Security for years, then became
part-time college teachers who paid into Public Employees Retirement
Association (PERA) instead of SS for several years. The latter typifies CCCS
adjunct faculty. Adjunct faculty are 80% of CCCS faculty and are nearly HALF ofthe entire CCCS workforce (4,613 of the 12,590 CCCS employees in 2017).
How do the two programs work to hurt adjunct
faculty? Briefly, when PERA worker/members retire, Social Security (SS) will
deduct from their SS benefit 2/3 of whatever they may receive from PERA.
Lifetime-career PERA-only workers are thus not affected. However, those adjunct
faculty who worked in professions previously and now bring that professional
expertise to CCCS classrooms will be penalized mightily in retirement,
financially.
For example: Perhaps from previous work in the
private sector, you are slated to receive $1,100/month from SS, and then, from
dozens of years working "part-time" as an adjunct faculty in the
CCCS, you are slated to receive $1,000/month from PERA. What you don't realize
is how the GPO/WEP programs require SS to deduct 2/3 of the PERA amount from
your SS payments. In this example, you might have believed you would be
receiving a total of $2,100 month in retirement from the combined SS and PERA
($1,100 + $1,000). However, SS will deduct $666 from that $1,100. Instead, you
will be receiving only $1,434/month. At $1,434/month, that puts you at an
annual retirement income of $17,208. In other words, your income throughout
retirement will be $6,933 below the living wage for the Denver metro area($24,141 in 2017).
In this way, as if poverty level wages working
as an adjunct were not devastating enough, as a final and enduring insult, you learn
that years of top-notch work in the CCCS will make you $666 poorer the rest of
your life.
Wouldn't it be helpful if, when new adjunct
faculty take a position in the CCCS, we could let them know about how these two
programs will deduct funds from their SS payments when they retire because of
how PERA interacts with the GPO/WEP?
While CCCS
presidents boast about a faculty of working professionals and about "appreciating
adjunct faculty," they do nothing to look out for that same faculty by pushing
to change the PERA/GPO/WEP issue. A vibrant and employee-focused CCCS HR
division would be doing so. Are they? If lobbyists under contract to the CCCS
were similarly focused, they, too, might be working to change this situation. Are they? Who is? Only the AAUP chapters are doing so. Our AAUP chapters of
the CCCS learned of these provisions through our own research as part of our
Adjunct Survival Workshop Series.
Most adjunct
faculty believe they'll snag all their SS retirement when they retire AND their
PERA. They are unaware of how the GPO/WEP will HURT them in retirement. Your
single letter to a U.S. lawmaker might help, but just think of what a
difference it makes when a juggernaut organization like the AAUP gets behind a
push for needed change. Our AAUP chapters have been writing to U.S. lawmakers
and colleagues for some time now about the GPO/WEP. Please join us, and add
your voice to our chorus.
