Christie toughens stance with public workers
The governor - his eye on the 2016 race - has frozen step pay. The unions are hitting back.
Gov. Christie has taken an aggressive approach to dealing with public workers and their unions since taking office in early 2010.
He has encouraged voters to reject school budgets in communities where teachers weren't accepting pay freezes, pushed to change civil-service rules, and signed legislation that forced employees to pay more toward to their pensions and health benefits.
Now that Christie has joined the 2016 Republican presidential primary field, his administration is taking another tough stance toward public workers.
It recently told thousands of union members whose contracts expired June 30 that they will not be receiving annual incremental pay increases while there is no new deal in place.
In the past, the unions say, workers have generally received their annual increases if their performance merited the bump - even without a contract.
Christie's freeze affects state office workers, college professors, corrections officers, and other groups of public workers who have not yet reached the top of their pay scales.
Public-worker unions have been responding to the Christie administration's new position on pay increments - something many view as a pressure tactic - by filing administrative grievances. And at least one union, Policemen's Benevolent Association Local 105, has filed suit in Superior Court.
Lance Lopez, president of PBA Local 105, said the administration's freeze affects 3,700 members of his union. The prior agreement with the state said that the rules established under a contract that expired on June 30 would be extended for a year if no new agreement was reached, he said. And the union would have had to have been informed in writing by Feb. 1 of any change, which did not occur, he added.
"In the past they've always maintained these step increments," Lopez said. "We believe that it's a violation of the agreement that we had."
The administration's position on step pay comes as the amount public employees contribute to their health-care coverage is becoming a hot issue. That's because a four-year sunset provision on health-care contributions was a part of the 2011 law that forced them to pay more toward both pensions and health benefits.
Because of the sunset provision, health-care contributions will be back up for negotiation as contracts come up for renewal.
By taking the stance that workers are no longer entitled to step increases, the administration appears to be adopting a position the state Public Employment Relations Commission took last year in a case in Atlantic County, in which the local government was in a labor dispute with sheriff's officers.
"We have acted appropriately and fully within the law," said Christie spokesman Brian Murray.
The pay-increment issue has heated up just as the four-year sunset provision in the June 2011 worker-benefits law commonly referred to as Chapter 78 has started to become a factor in contract negotiations at all levels in the state.
Chapter 78 is the same law that called for the state to increase its own contributions to the chronically underfunded public-employee pension system over a seven-year term.
But Christie, despite touting the reform effort as having saved the pension system, reneged on the promise to make increased pension contributions last year amid state budget problems.
The state Supreme Court said last month that the state constitution does not compel Christie to follow the payment schedule that was promised under Chapter 78 as a contractual right of the employees.
That ruling came even as the employees are still paying more toward their pensions because there was no sunset provision in place like the one that applies to health benefits.
Depending on how contract negotiations go, state and local governments could be forced to once again pick up more of the cost of their employees' health benefits.
Murray said Chapter 78 only started the process of controlling health-coverage costs, which are a huge expense for the state.
But Lopez, the corrections union official, countered that it is wrong for the administration to say it wants to abide by certain components of Chapter 78 while at the same time choosing to ignore other requirements spelled out in the law, such as the state pension contributions.
"You shouldn't be able to pick and choose portions of Chapter 78 that you feel are right," he said. "It's not fair."
