Medgar Evers College stiffed its adjunct professors, failing to pay them after classes resumed in September.
The adjuncts at the Crown Heights college, which is part of the public City University of New York, were supposed to get checks on Sept. 10 and 24.
But most of the school’s 205 adjuncts were not paid until Oct. 8 and by Thursday 5% of them were still awaiting paychecks, a college spokeswoman said.
“Adjuncts were on-boarded late as a result of the enrollment and budgetary challenges that were caused by the pandemic,” Provost Augustine Okereke wrote in an Aug. 28 email to department chairs, which was seen by The Post.
Okereke said in a Sept. 12 email that the college was late in submitting documents to the state, which pays the employees, and that the Sept. 24 payroll would be impacted.
“We really empathize with them,” he wrote.
But the head of the adjuncts’ union wasn’t having it.
“Medgar Evers College must pay its adjuncts on time — no excuses. The administrators whose failures left the lowest-paid workers at CUNY without paychecks in the middle of a pandemic recession should be held accountable. If there are state deadlines to be met to ensure on-time payment, it is the responsibility of the college administration to meet them,” said Barbara Bowen, president of the Professional Staff Congress, the union representing the adjuncts.
Medgar Evers was the only CUNY college with the payroll delays.
CUNY colleges rely on the adjuncts to teach many classes. The base salary for an adjunct lecturer is $4,469 for a three-credit course. Adjunct professors are paid a base of $6,062.
The leadership of Medgar Evers has come under fire in recent months with the widow of the slain civil rights icon, for whom it is named, saying the school had become a national “embarrassment.”
Rudy Crew, the college president and former New York City schools chancellor, has said he will retire in June 2021.