Governor Christie of NJ is a right wing pigeon. Christie has been at war with unions since he first took office in Janurary.
His latest (anti-union) effort is promoting a 'tool kit' that will weaken the civil service sector. According to Christie it is in "getting rid of an arbitration system that is tilted too much in favor of labor and against management" that will solve NJ budget woes!
When I read that quote it sort of annoyed to me to the point of pissing me off a little. My opinion is that a major problem in America (since the inglorious Reagan revolution) has been that everything has been basically tilted against labor.
Christie can not stand that New Jersey is one of the few states that still has a strong labor presence. And being the good right wing pigeon he is, he's doing his damndest to weaken unions and tilt things in the favor of management.
His proposal includes letting "Municipalities that reject a plan to exit civil service can try again in two years, but cities or towns that opt out can't return for 10 years."
(courierpostonline)Unions surprised by plans
Two weeks ago, unions successfully got an appeals court to overturn an executive order in which Christie sought to apply pay-to-play rules to unions. Last week, Christie proposed a property tax "tool kit" that limits public workers' pay and overhauls civil service and collective bargaining.
Unions are particularly alarmed by tool kit proposals they said would effectively make it impossible for public workers to get raises, as local property taxes couldn't increase by more than 2.5 percent and rapidly escalating costs such as health care would begin to fall under that cap. Local governments will have to institute deep layoffs to cut costs..
"There are so many problems here," Hetty Rosenstein (Communications Workers of America) said. "Start with the fact that we don't think the governor is just trying to address fiscal problems in a very difficult economic environment. We think that the governor has an ideology which is to shut down public services because he doesn't believe in them."
I agree with New Jersey Education Association spokesman Steve Baker about Governor Christie. "He is leveling his assault on every resident of New Jersey. It's going to be broad-based, and it's going to disproportionately hurt the poor and middle class."
Luckily NJ still has some checks and balances. As mentioned an appeal courts ruled that Christie had gone beyond his unilateral authority when he tried to limit the amount of campaign contributions from public employee unions.
On Jan. 20, the day after his inauguration, Mr. Christie, a first-term Republican, signed an executive order that would have lowered the maximum contributions by the unions from thousands of dollars — tens of thousands in some cases — to just $300.
In Friday’s ruling, a three-judge panel of the Appellate Division said that such changes go far beyond the governor’s unilateral authority and would require enactment of a state law — an unlikely prospect with Democrats in control of both houses of the Legislature.
In the meantime there is a protest planned against Governor Christie and his policies 12:00pm May 22 at the New Jersey State House
http://www.njaflcio.org/The New Jersey State AFL-CIO invites you to attend an historic rally to protect New Jersey’s families and communities from Governor Christie’s proposed budget cuts and to reject his reform package or "toolkit" which dismantles the state civil service and arbitration systems as well as violates the collective bargaining rights of workers.