Labor Leaders Blast Scheme to Cut New Jersey State Workers' Pay, Benefits

From CWA, AFT and AFSCME locals to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, union leaders are furious with three New Jersey lawmakers, all Democrats, who want to slash state workers' pay and benefits by 15 percent rather than support the governor's plan for a modest sales tax hike to fix the state's fiscal problems.

"These proposals are patently unfair and would completely undermine the collective bargaining process," Sweeney said in a letter to New Jersey's speaker of the house and president of the senate, asking them to take a "firm and unambiguous public stand against the proposals and to refute immediately the contemptible attempts to smear government employees."

The state has been in financial trouble since Republican Gov. Christine Whitman's tax cuts in the 1990s, and the pay and benefits of state employees have been an easy, and perennial, target. Current Gov. Jon Corzine has put forth a 2007 budget with more than $300 million in cuts in social programs and higher education, and is proposing to raise the sales tax from 6 percent to 7 percent in order to balance the budget without further cuts.

Corzine opposes the lawmakers' scheme to roll back union workers' pay and benefits. "The budget is not the time or place for contract negotiations. The governor inherited a contract and intends to honor it," his spokesman, Anthony Coley, told reporters. "Contracts are legally binding documents and budget negotiations are not contract negotiations."

CWA, the largest state worker union in New Jersey, is running radio ads supporting Corzine's budget plan and is pointing out that state workers have already made health care and wage concessions that have saved the state $480 million.