Think New Jersey is a fairly progressive state? Relatively speaking, you'd be right. Think the Democratic party in New Jersey is progressive? You'd be wrong. It is boss ridden and filled with DINOs. This has led to the abomination of the leadership of the Democratic legislature agreeing with Chris Christie to take away public workers' right to collectively bargain over health benefits.
Governor Chris Christie was the big winner last night when he and the state’s top Democratic and Republican legislative leaders announced they had reached agreement on legislation that would require teachers, police, firefighters and other government employees to pay more toward their pensions and healthcare.
The agreement would effectively strip public employees of the right to bargain over health benefits in their union contracts by having the state unilaterally set health benefit contribution levels through legislation.
http://www.njspotlight.com/...
This was done even though a majority of Democrats in the Assembly, and probably in the Senate, oppose this. That's right, the Democratic leadership and a minority of Democrats in each house siding with the legislative Republicans and the notorious anti-union governor to take away workers' rights.
The health care provision has a sunset clause after four years. But what do you think the odds of the legislature agreeing to return what they just took away? It would require a progressive Democratic majority sufficient to overcome the votes of all the Republicans and the DINOs. Possible, but not likely. Or it would require the veto of a progressive Democratic governor. However, the leadership DINOs have so divided the party, that it will be very difficult to beat Christie in 2013. Many, in fact, are tacit or actual allies of Christie.
Christie's support primarily comes from two counties, Camden and Essex (Newark). And from the bosses of those counties Donald Norcross and Steve Adubato, as well as the Essex County executive Joe DiVincenzo. This was the result of a coup in 2009 (after these folks were less than enthusiastic in supporting Jon Corzine over Christie):
Norcross was a key player with Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo in engineering the leadership coup that ousted Senator Richard Codey from the Senate presidency in December 2009 in favor of Sweeney and put in the relatively unknown Oliver, who is employed as an aide to DiVincenzo, as Assembly speaker to replace retiring Speaker Joseph Roberts.
The Sweeney referred to is Senate President Steve Sweeney, the archvillian of this piece.
Sweeney’s proposed pension and health benefit legislation was a "Christie Lite" version of the plan the governor laid out in his March budget address. Where Christie’s plan called for public employees to pay 3 percent more of salary toward their pensions immediately, Sweeney’s legislation calls for government workers and teachers to pay 1 percent immediately and an additional 1 percent phased in over the next seven years. (Police and firefighters pay an additional 1.5 percent immediately.) While Christie wanted public employees to pay 30 percent of the cost of their health care premiums, Sweeney’s plan provides for public employees to pay from 8 percent to 30 percent on a sliding scale based on income.
Sweeney, a business agent for an Ironworkers Union local who is the highest-ranking state government official to come out of the ranks of labor, has been calling for public sector workers to pay more toward their pensions and health care since 2005. . . .
But labor leaders found it incomprehensible that a union leader like Sweeney would go along with Christie in stripping public employees of the right to bargain over healthcare benefits, especially when negotiations were already underway on new state worker contracts this spring and Christie had proclaimed his eagerness to engage in tough negotiations at his various town meetings.
To state and national labor leaders, the Sweeney-Christie plan was just the latest in a wave of national efforts to crush the power of public employee unions that began in Wisconsin with legislation passed by Republican Governor Scott Walker and his GOP-controlled legislature.
Sweeney, a union man? Don't be fooled. The only union he cares about is his union. He struck a deal with Christie so that Christie would not go after project labor agreement, which unions like his, involved in construction, benefit from. In return, he's been Christie's toady on issue after issue.
The Oliver referred to is Shelia Oliver. A far backbencher from Essex County, who was made speaker of the assembly as party of the Norcross/Adubato deal in 2009. She promised not to bring the anti-collective bargaining measure to the floor of the Assembly unless she had the support of a majority of her caucus. Nonetheless, she did exactly that. Why? Because she is employed by Essex County executive DiVincenzo. Who at one ceremony last year was actually photographed holding hands with Christie. Her action has drawn the condemation of two other high ranking Democratic members of the Assembly, Joe Cryan and Bonnie Watson-Coleman.
For those of us who haven't sold out our party, we decline to accept. And for those of us who work for a living, we decline to agree," Cryan said in a telephone interview. "The Speaker doesn't have the majority of her own caucus, and as the majority leader, I say she shouldn't put it up. And as for the rest of us, we all want health care. We all believe in a better life for us and our children. And how terrible it is that the Democratic Party today chose to take a different path."
It now pains me to see how we have been strategically and systematically manipulated to compromise the value of our majority in support of this governor's agenda," she wrote. "How are we allowing ourselves to be dragged down this governor's right-wing alley of pain and devastation that is targeting the middle class, frail, elderly and poor, and support an agenda that upholds and indeed lifts the wealthiest?"
. . . .
Watson Coleman, a 13-year veteran of the Assembly, said the letter was meant to "jar the collective consciousness of my caucus
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So there you have the disgusting spectacle. It was perhaps best summed by the head of the CWA:
"We expected this from Governor Christie, but we did not expect so-called Democratic leaders to abandon working families,” Hetty Rosenstein, New Jersey state director for the Communications Workers of America, (CWA) said last night on the eve of a previously planned 9 a.m. mass rally by union workers at the Statehouse.
EDITED TO ADD
For those of you in New Jersey, you can call 888-875-6588 to contact your legislators to register your opposition.