I’ll start by stating the obvious: Every worker deserves paid sick days and guaranteed job security while recovering from illness or a catastrophic personal event. 

Currently, my part-time Connecticut State Colleges and University colleagues, who teach an estimated 58% of CSCU courses, have none of the above. If they miss work for sickness, they’re not paid. If they require maternity or paternity leave, they’re not paid. If they miss work for any legitimate reason, they still run the risk of not being rehired the following semester, since part-time hiring suffers from the same pitfalls of the worst of gig-economy jobs. 

State employees are not covered by the recent law requiring employers to provide paid sick leave, and instead rely on union contracts with the state for benefits.

The results are also obvious. People come to work sick out of fear and risk spreading whatever they have to their students and their colleagues, and anyone who’s ever worked in a school knows that passing along illness to one is passing along an illness to many. People suffer from not only being unable to get well, but also from the tremendous stress of having to balance legitimate health concerns with serious life issues, and from the physical toll of not being able to take care of themselves or loved ones. Add to this the lack of healthcare available to CSCU part-timers, and it’s easy to see that the current system is undermining the well-being and consistency of teachers carrying the majority of the teaching load at Central, Eastern, Southern and Western.

I’ve been a full-time professor at Southern for 31 years, and I’m fortunate enough to have sick leave and a sick-day bank of colleagues from which to draw, all of which I had to do. In 2016, I was going blind in both eyes because of failing corneas. In order not to miss teaching, I set up two cataract surgeries and two cornea transplants for the summer. However, after the first transplant and second cataract surgery, my retinas began to tear, rendering me nearly blind until one eye finally cleared enough to risk the second transplant in November. 

If I had not had access to paid sick leave, I would have been without pay for an entire semester. Then, the following summer, larger retinal complications occurred, causing me to miss the fall semester and part of the following spring semester. Part-timers covered several of the classes I could not teach, even though if something similar happened to them, they would not have been paid and their jobs would not have been protected.

Of course, there are always trolls who worry about people gaming the system. Sick leave and personal leave are determined by clear human resources and administrative guidelines and require proof of illness or hardship, so dishonesty is not an issue. Besides, the part-timers who would do such a thing are the tiniest percentage of the workforce.

The part-time teachers (and we are all primarily teachers, no matter our research or publishing accomplishments) in the CSCU system deserve job security and the dignity provided by allowing them to heal and tend to their loved ones when necessary. The state has the ability to provide these things. We must hope the state will do the right thing. 

Tim Parrish teaches in the English department at Southern CT State University and is a member of CSU-AAUP, the faculty union.