October 31, 2025

The independent movie “Adjunct,” in which filmmaker Ron Najor draws on personal experience to depict the real-life difficulties adjuncts face on the job, resonated with UUP members who marked Campus Equity Week with watch parties and a forum on the film.

UUP and Higher Education Labor United made free links to the 2024 movie available in the days leading up to the Oct. 29 UUP virtual forum.

For the forum, statewide Secretary-Treasurer Jeri O’Bryan-Losee moderated a discussion on the movie with a panel that featured Jaclyn Pittsley, a full-time lecturer at Cortland and chair of the UUP Contingent Employment Committee; Bret Benjamin of the University at Albany, the chief negotiator for UUP; NYSUT Labor Relations Specialist Chris Sielaff; and Najor, the movie’s director and star.

“Universities have really built their budgets on the backs of adjuncts,” Benjamin said, reflecting a common theme among the comments and questions during the forum. Benjamin, Pittsley and Sielaff also noted, however, that UUP has set a national standard in addressing the issues of adjunct labor.

“I think our union has moved an enormous distance [on this issue] in the years I’ve been in it,” Benjamin, a statewide Executive Board member, said.

Pittsley, who is the first UUP member to exclusively represent contingents on the Executive Board, said that UUP has been a leader in this area.

“We fight back to make sure all those adjuncts have job security and fair pay and health insurance, and that’s what I’m in UUP to do,” she said.

Realistic depictions

Najor, an acclaimed independent filmmaker, is a former adjunct who drew on many of his experiences and observations for the movie. The film’s depiction of the ever-present hope that the adjunct position might lead to a permanent or tenure-track job; the reluctance to turn down requests for unpaid additional assignments so as to be perceived as a team player; the constant push-pull to meet the demands and needs of students—these scenes would resonate with almost anyone who’s been an adjunct, the panelists said.

The term “adjunct,” as UUP and the movie use it, refers to academic faculty who teach semester by semester, with no guarantee that their employment will be extended to the next semester. Within UUP, the term “contingent” refers to all academic and professional employees who are not eligible for permanent appointment or tenure.

Adding to the problems of most adjuncts: the overall stress of low pay and the ever-present worry about retaining health benefits. The movie’s protagonist—an adjunct English instructor at an unnamed college in southern California—works as an Uber driver to supplement his income, and worries constantly that he will lose his health insurance.

“I never wanted to say what the college is because to me, this could be any college in the country,” Najor told the audience. “I’ve had multiple full-time and tenured and tenure-track professors come up to me after watching the movie and saying, ‘Wow, I had no idea’ … I didn’t cover everything, but I feel I covered a lot.”

Work to be done

Even in a higher education union that began prioritizing the needs of adjuncts two decades ago, leaders recognize there is more work to be done. Adjuncts represent as much as 50% of the faculty at some campuses in the United States, and UUP is working to make sure that they continue to make gains in the terms and conditions of their employment at UUP-represented SUNY campuses.

UUP’s current contract with the state, which expires July 1, 2026, achieved real improvements for UUP’s lowest-paid members, including adjuncts. That contract saw substantial increases in the maximum per-course payments for non-tenure-track members, increases in contractually set minimum salaries for full-time lecturers, on-base retention awards for qualifying full-time contingent faculty and increases in guaranteed appointment periods for qualifying part-time and full-time contingent faculty, among other gains.

UUP hopes to build on these and other improvements for contingents in upcoming negotiations for a new contract.

“Adjunct” can be purchased or rented through a number of outlets, including Amazon Prime Video, Fandango At Home, Apple TV online and YouTube.