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Governor Corzine announced in November of last year that he would not be giving us the Friday after Thanksgiving
off in the future. Since that was also the time we started our new contract negotiations, it was SQUARELY on the shoulders
of our leadership to make that a contract demand. They knew what he said PUBLICLY and should have responded then and
there with a contract demand if they wanted to solidify the granting of the day.
All negotiations require give and take, so you might not want to place the item on the table in a sort of tactical
move so that you don't have to give something else up to get the day off; however, to put on this display of fire power and
self-righteous indignation, knowing that any arbitrator and/or PERC agent is going to rule against us based on precedent setting
cases in the past, is absurd and a waste of money. They screwed up and had to blame anybody and make them the scape
goats. In fact, those were the exact words Carolyn Wade said about why the Legislators were gunning for state workers
benefits....she said it was because when you screw up, you look for anybody to blame. How prophetic she was!
OK. One show of lack of leadership does not mean the leader is bad, right?
So what happened with our brothers and sisters at Arthur Brisbane? Here's the Union's pitch... http://www.cwa-union.org/news/cwa-news/page.jsp?itemID=27374705; however, the fact is this occurred while our political ALLIES were in power. And besides the Viewpoint articles,
was there a massive radio and bulletin board campaign like in the past that stopped other institutions from being closed?
Did we have a lobby day to gain political power on the issue?Where were our leaders then?
And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Our leadership at Local 1040 is asleep. We represent private sector employees and a Bill (A-1044) that
would help ensure these workers would have time to get trained and find alternate employment before a plant closes or a mass
layoff occurs has sat on the Governor's desk waiting for him to sign it into law. Not a word from our leaders has been
said.
We also represent state, and non-state, public workers and a Bill that would help protect our members from management
"imposing" a contract on them if negotiations have reached impasse (S-319), has sat in the legislature for well over
two years without a peep about it from Carolyn Wade or Don Klein.
While we had encouraged all to get involved in helping to get the Bills passed by clicking on these links
(Support S-319 (Madden / Sweeney) Concerns the Non-imposition of Public Employee
Contracts, and Please Sign into Law W.A.R.N Act Reform) the fact that our leaders said and done NOTHING to promote them shows us how out of touch they are with their
primary responsibility of protecting and advocating for us. Even the Paid Family Leave Bill died in caucus because Carolyn
Wade decided to wait until a few days before it was to "die" to announce that there was even a problem with it passing, and
even THAT was only because of our reporting of it on our website.
The Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee met on Monday, January 28, 2008 at 1pm in Committee Room 4
(1st Floor of the State House Annex) in an effort to get Senator Sweeney's Bill S786 (Paid Family Medical Leave) out of Committee
and onto the Senate Floor for a vote. If you were waiting for Carolyn Wade or the Local 1040 political crew to give
you advance notice about it, forget it. They are still asleep at the wheel! Shirley Turner, Carolyn Wade's
"friend" who voted against the bill in the previous session and who had vowed to vote against it again failed to
even show up for the hearing! Good Democrat, huh? The Bill passed the Committee in a straight party line
vote (minus Turner). Now begins the hard work of getting the bill (A-873 by Albano and Oliver) though the
Assembly Labor Committee and voted on the floor of both houses. Please see the letter from Senator Turner to one of
our readers, who emailed us a copy of it, along with their response to her! You can find it on our "INTERVIEW" web page.
Most recently, it was the announcement of the new Health Care Plans for public sector workers. A special
Open Enrollment period for state workers began on January 28, 2008 and continue through February 15, 2008
State workers who are currently enrolled in the Traditional Plan or NJ Plus will be AUTOMATICALLY transferred into NJ Direct
15 unless you want one of the two HMO's being offered (Cigna and Aetna) instead. The recommendation by the Final Evaluation
Committee of the State Health Benefits Commission was for Horizon to take over the new PPO. They also recommended
that the HMO be divided between two providers (Aetna and CIGNA) instead of the single model they had hoped to
do. There will be a loss of about 9% of currently participating doctors and facilities (called disruption) with the
new HMO plans, and 13% weighted average disruption with the PPO.
Does anyone remember Carolyn Wade promising us EQUAL OR BETTER? How about Nationwide coverage??
All lies to get us to vote for a lousy contract!. Is anyone keeping a tally sheet on this? Read the report for
yourself:
Slow to react to threats to our members, over confident and boastful about clout that she doesn't even have...
these are NOT the attributes of a good leader. It's time for a change!
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