Response split on call for pay freezes

Like practically every school district in New Jersey, Willingboro is looking at tough times - possible layoffs and cutbacks from a projected loss of nearly $3.5 million in state aid.

So last Monday, interim Superintendent David Hespe, acting on a statewide request by Education Commissioner Bret Schundler, asked the district's three unions to freeze their pay next year to save money.

The next morning, one of the unions, the Willingboro Professional Educators Association, a 13-member unit representing department heads and other managers, voted unanimously to forgo a 4.5 percent contracted raise next year.

"We were trying to be Good Samaritans," said William Hurley, local president and district facilities director.

Districts across the state are having tough conversations like the ones in Willingboro, where the superintendent and the business administrator also agreed to a wage freeze. A new survey by the New Jersey School Boards Association finds many districts seeking givebacks from teachers' current contracts.

Meanwhile, a forceful Gov. Christie and the state's largest and most influential educators' union, the New Jersey Education Association, remain locked in a war of words for taxpayers' hearts and minds.

On Tuesday, Christie appealed to school boards and districts' unions to freeze salaries in collective bargaining agreements for the coming fiscal year and to have members contribute to their health benefits.

The school boards association supported the call, but the NJEA lashed back.

Union president Barbara Keshishian, in a written statement, accused Christie of bullying and attempting "to coerce school employees into bearing the full burden of his wrongheaded educational priorities."

She faulted Christie for rejecting a proposed surtax on the people who make more than $400,000 a year, which, depending on the estimate used, could generate enough revenue to make up for much of the governor's proposed $819 million education aid cut.

"This is a wrongheaded attack on the incomes of middle and working-class New Jersey residents," Keshishian said. "It is wrong to ask the women and men who work in our schools to take a hit to their incomes while he refuses to ask the same of the wealthiest people in the state."

By Friday, Keshishian was protesting Christie's "shot after shot at school employees," suggesting that teachers are uncaring and do not work hard.

Over the course of the week, Republican Assemblymen Alex DeCroce and Jay Webber of Morris and Passaic Counties, Joe Malone of Burlington County, and Declan O'Scanlon of Monmouth and Mercer Counties weighed in for the governor, urging the NJEA, which represents most of the state's teachers, to take the freeze.

Even Senate President Steve Sweeney (D., Gloucester), a labor leader, has said he thinks the NJEA should agree to a wage freeze to save members' jobs, but he is also pushing the wealth surtax.

Schundler cast a wider net for savings, suggesting in a letter to district superintendents that all school employees should consider a wage freeze.

In case anyone missed the debate, late in the week the governor's office praised the Montclair Education Association and four unions, including teachers in West Essex, for taking the freeze and criticized Bridgewater-Raritan's teachers union for not even considering a lower wage increase. In Montclair, top administrators also agreed to a freeze, as did Bridgewater-Raritan's superintendent. In West Essex, all district employees agreed to a freeze.

Even before Christie's request, some districts were looking at employee givebacks to lessen cuts to staff and programs. So far, only a limited number have come forward as acting on the governor's request.

The 20-member Burlington Township Principals and Supervisors Association agreed to a wage freeze March 18, after the district learned it was scheduled to lose more than $2.7 million in state aid.

Local president Jim Mills, the district's guidance director, said teachers and school officials had been in discussions before the aid cut figures were released.

"We all thought we wanted to do something to help the district," Mills said.

The district's three top administrators and nonunion employees also are taking a one-year freeze. Besides the freeze, Superintendent Christopher Manno declined his merit increase for next year.

Many districts are trying to get givebacks. An ongoing state school boards association survey has found that, with 313 of 588 districts reporting, nearly 64 percent indicated they were talking to their teachers about reopening contracts. Those were union locals into their first or second year, said association spokesman Frank Belluscio. An additional 265 districts, he said, are at their end of current contracts and are negotiating new ones.

In many cases, school districts' dire financial woes will no doubt affect those negotiations.

Just last week, officials in Franklin Township rescinded a teacher contract proposal for less than 4 percent wage increases, citing Christie's budget proposal cutting $1.3 million in aid to the district.

In Willingboro, the teachers union was one of the two labor units that did not go along with the freeze. Local president Patrick Myers said he found it "alarming" to be called on to make concessions without mutual bargaining.

"We've always negotiated at the table," he said. "You give something; you get something."

Myers also said the district employees who agreed to a wage freeze tend to be higher paid than teachers.

"If I take a zero (increase), are my bills going to stay at zero?" he said.

Besides the very real issue of how much jobs- and program-sparing money is saved, there is the political question of how this latest Christie-NJEA toss down plays in the public consciousness.

"It's political theater, but that doesn't mean it's meaningless," said Philip Harvey, a Rutgers-Camden professor of law and economics with an expertise in labor.

At a time when other employees have lost benefits or pay, the NJEA may have a tough time winning support, Harvey said, but he called the union's framing Christie as "the rich man's governor" a clever strategy.

In the end, he said, what will matter is what happens on the district level.

"The back and forth between the governor and the state teachers union is neither here nor there because neither one of them is going to bargain with one another," Harvey said.