Law Firm Strikes Gold For Adjuncts' Golden Years

by Cara Nissman

Eva Mader has taught part-time for more than 20 years, but has only recently discovered she might have been entitled to receive retirement benefits since she started, thanks to the efforts of the Se attle-based law firm Bendich, Stobaugh & Strong, P.C.

“People used to ask when I was going to retire,” said Mader, a part-time German instructor for 24 years at North Seattle Community College. “I used to say, ‘Don’t use that word retirement with me because I’m not going to retire. Retirement means you’re getting money from your employer when you leave.’ I would say, ‘One day, Eva’s not coming back.’”

Thanks to a recent King County Superior Court ruling in a class-action lawsuit brought by the Bendich, Stobaugh & Strong, Mader and about 1,000 other part-time community college instructors statewide are likely to receive $12 million in retroactive retirement benefits.

“We have made progress to make (ourselves) seem [less] like more than second-class citizens,” said Dana Rush, a part-time astronomy instructor at Green River Community College since 1991. “And without any job security--being employed term-by-term without tenure--it required a lot of courage to rock the boat.”

Rush, along with Keith Hoeller, co-founder of the spunky Washington Part-Time Faculty Association, decided to shake things up after reading about Bendich, Stobaugh & Strong’s the law firm’s victories on behalf of part-time workers against the Redmond, Washington software giant Microsoft Corp. and King County on behalf of part-time workers. The Microsoft battle lasted 12 years, and ended with in a $96.8 million settlement.

“They weren’t exactly the same issues, but pretty similar,” said Rush. “Microsoft was paying people very generously although they were denying them benefits, so our situation was more desperate. But [the Microsoft outcome] gave us some hope.”

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