Wed, 02/10/2010 - 7:00pm

Take Action to Protect Your Pension and Benefits

 
State Senate Does Christie's Dirty Work and Attacks Collective Bargaining
CWA Calls on Members to Act Immediately
 
Four bills have been introduced in the New Jersey State Senate that all public worker unions are concerned about. The four bills are part of a package taking aim at the pensions and benefits of public workers—all being done outside of collective bargaining with no input from the workers.  Worse, Senate leaders in from both parties have said they want the bills, introduced on February 8, to pass the Senate by February 22.
 
Call your State Senator RIGHT NOW (to find your State Senator, enter your zip code here).  Tell him or her that your pension and health benefits are a serious issue, and that the State Senate should consider these problems carefully and get all the facts—ten days simply isn’t enough. If Senate leaders won’t commit to that, your Senator should vote ‘no’ on the pension and health care reform bills.
 
The bills do several things we oppose:
 
  1. Reduce the benefit formula for the Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) and Teachers Pension and Annuity Fund (TPAF) by making the formula the average of your last 5 years of salary instead of 3 years. Furthermore, this would be multiplied by your years of service/60 instead of your years of service/55. This reduces benefits by 11% for new workers. It is also being done in a very unfair way—these are modest benefits and they cost much less than benefits for other public pension plans that are not being cut in this way.
  2. The Legislature is not proposing a real solution to the genuine problem for the pension plan – funding it. Sweeney and Kean have proposed a Constitutional Amendment that would fund the plan over the course of 7 years. But that bill would need to be passed in both houses, signed by Governor Christie, and then the public would have to vote to fund our pensions. The same people who have been attacking us in public and claiming that our benefits are unaffordable, are going to then ask the public to pay to fund our pensions. We do not trust that they are acting in good faith.
  3. Anyone who is not vested can opt out of the Defined Benefit plan. This will lead younger workers to not contribute to the plan, thinking they won’t be in the job for that long (remember that?), and will lead to a further defunding and destabilization of the plan.
  4. There is a provision of one bill that repeals the “non-forfeitable right” of anyone with 5 years or more of service. This means that anyone who does not presently have 5 years of service could have his or her benefits reduced in the future.
  5. Another bill eliminates Disability Retirement for future workers of PERS and TPAF (but not the other pension plans). An upcoming CWA analysis says this will not save any money at all.
  6. The bill imposes a 1.5% cost for health care and for retiree health care. This might not be a problem – we negotiated that at the state level – but it imposes it on all contracts in addition to whatever else is negotiated. So in other contracts, where unions have negotiated other payments for healthcare, this would add to them. The 1.5% is a floor – not a ceiling.
  7. The healthcare provisions generally wreak havoc on collective bargaining because they also say that if the state negotiates something at the state level, it is automatically imposed on local government workers and teachers. When? Mid-contract? And if the State negotiates it with whom?

 

Take action NOW to stop this.  Call your State Senator and tell him or her that your pension and benefits are too important for the Senate to ram through changes like this before all the facts are known. Tell your State Senator that if Senate Leaders insist on voting on these changes on February 22, he or she should vote ‘no’ to all of the pension and health benefit reform bills.

 

Expect that you will be told that your Legislator is supporting this in order to save the pension – or something similar. Tell them that if they are serious about that, they should at least get the facts. 
 
For more information about why careful consideration is needed and how these bills scapegoat the lowest paid public workers in New Jersey, see here.
 
 
More Bad News to Come
 
Governor Chris Christie has called a Joint Session of the Legislature for Thursday, February 11. We don’t know what news we will hear but we know it won’t be good.
 
As soon as we have more information, another email will be going out to bring you up to date.
 
 
February 22, 2010 – All Shop Stewards on Deck! 
 
There will be another statewide shop steward meeting on February 22, 2010. Locals will be contacting stewards to give them all of the information.
 
 
Wear Red on Thursdays
Members of Local 1037 at 124 Halsey Street in Newark Wearing Red last Thursday
 
The only way we are going to come through in this precarious situation is if we are all united and taking action as a united force. CWA members throughout the state are wearing red on Thursdays in a show of strength and solidarity. 
 
Take this flyer to your worksite, and make sure all of your coworkers know that CWA owns Thursdays in New Jersey. Wear as much red as you can on Thursdays and ask your coworkers to do the same. And when you do, make sure you take pictures and send them njvolunteer@cwa-union.org.