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Record series on why public services cost so much, starting w/ Sunday 7-16-06 Can N.J. afford the rising cost of teachers and cops? Sunday, July 16, 2006
......"But in the Record poll, 41 percent of respondents blamed the state for their swelling tax bills, making the governor and state lawmakers the top-ranked villains.
There's wisdom in their choice. State officials have made sure that in the delicate balance of contract negotiations, the police and teachers unions have a thumb on the scale......
So we have unions that look out for teachers and police and we have a Legislature that looks out for teachers and police and we have nobody with any real clout looking out for the taxpayer, who is now shelling out an additional penny in sales tax -- a 17 percent increase -- on top of a hefty bump in property taxes......."
Record series on why public services cost so much, starting w/ Sunday 7-16-06
Can N.J. afford the rising cost of teachers and cops?
Sunday, July 16, 2006
By BOB IVRY
STAFF WRITER
We're grateful to our police officers. We count on them. We're proud of them.
Our state is going broke paying for them.
RUNAWAY PAY
Focusing on police officers and teachers, we describe a system that has produced $100,000 base salaries for the rank and file, generous pensions and no-cost benefit packages – all at a time when the private sector is going in the opposite direction.
We don't blame the workers. They're paid what government employers are willing to pay them.
We blame the people who established a system that's so one-sided that local governments can't get a break. Those governments sit down to negotiate contracts with police and teachers and it's game over before it even begins. The big losers in the process – taxpayers.
The series
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Same goes for teachers. We wish we could afford them, but we're having trouble.
We're having trouble paying for
Especially now that state officials have closed a $4.5 billion budget gap by raising taxes and cutting services while sidestepping the subject of how we compensate unionized public workers.
This isn't about bad guys -- crooked politicians or school superintendents with secret retirement deals.
No, police and teachers are working people. People we trust every day to prepare our children for the future. People whose job it is to step between us and harm.
But there are so many of them, and their unions keep beating town councils and school boards at the bargaining table.
If a corrupt politician dips into the town till, that's a problem. But pay every cop in town $100,000 and spring for family health benefits for every teacher and that's a path to financial ruin -- or a taxpayer revolt.
Check it out:
• $100K Club -- Police officers in northeast New Jersey routinely make more than $100,000 in total pay. They are among more than 10,000 government employees in
• Tops in cops -- Police in
For example,
Viewed another way: The base pay for a rank-and-file patrolman in
• Overdosing on overtime -- Overtime lifts police pay well above $100,000 in even middle-income communities. Police in
• Rewriting Genesis -- For police in Alpine and other towns, the week isn't seven days, but six -- four days on and two days off. The result is 17 extra days off a year, beyond holidays and vacation.
• Golden years --
• Who's the boss? -- Police in northeast
In 2004, the average income-tax filer in
"Property value is enhanced by good services," said Richard D. Loccke, a
Above average
Teachers' salaries and perks have indeed grown as well, although less so than cops'. Teachers in The Record's circulation area earn an average of roughly $61,500. It usually takes teachers twice as long to reach the top of the pay scale, but once they arrive there, they, too, often make more than the average taxpayer.
• Head of the class -- In Bergen alone, 1,126 teachers, or 10 percent, earned more than $90,000 in 2005-06, according to state records. In the city of
• Safe and secure -- Tenured teachers in
Over the past 10 years, not one of
The powerful New Jersey Education Association, the union that represents teachers in all but five
• Healthy benefits -- The NJEA has stuck to a policy that taxpayers must foot the entire bill for its members' health insurance.
"Protecting health benefits is our No. 1 priority," said George Lambert, an NJEA field representative for Region 23, which encompasses northern
Great benefits are remnants of a time when government pay was low. To make up for that, public employers offered perks like free health insurance.
Let's just say salaries have caught up, while benefits remain as generous as ever.
More than 53,000 full-time employees of the state government -- 75 percent of the total -- are enrolled in a state health insurance program that provides free coverage for them and their families, according to Thomas Vincz, spokesman for the Department of the Treasury.
More than 125,000 local employees also get free health benefits under the program, with only a few kicking in toward family coverage, he added.
Private industry nationwide provides only 9 percent of its workers with free family health coverage, a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found. The typical private-sector worker in
Unions supreme
Certainly, police officers and teachers are not the only causes of escalating taxes. Runaway spending is also caused by pay-to-play, waste and corruption, as well as shoddy and in some cases overpaid management.
But cops and teachers are the most prominent public workers in our towns. They're often the most numerous. They're usually the best paid rank-and-file workers. Their unions are the most powerful in
Their union leaders are skilled and persuasive.
"We are a very successful organization. I don't shy away from that," said NJEA assistant executive director Vincent Giordano. "What differentiates the NJEA from other unions? What makes us so successful? It's our ability to engage our members and our ability to meld their professional interests and their advocacy interests into an organization they believe is functioning on behalf of all their interests."
They are also unapologetic.
"Do you work around the clock? Christmas? Thanksgiving? Is somebody going to shoot at you?" said Michael J. Madonna, president of the New Jersey State Policemen's Benevolent Association. "When you leave to go to work you don't know if you're coming home. I don't want to be corny, but it's a fact. It's just what the job entails. The stress of the job."
Indeed, two officers were shot, one critically wounded, Thursday during a routine traffic stop in
Towns have found ways to pay for cops and teachers. Sometimes it's other workers who bear the brunt.
Usually, however, it's the taxpayer who gets the short end. Rather than cut services, most municipalities raise taxes. In the 93 towns of The Record's circulation area, property taxes surged 58 percent between 1995 and 2005. That's nearly twice the inflation rate for the
The state, too, has hit upon a formula of paying employees more and raising taxes to match. Governor Corzine's "deficit-closing" budget calls for a 9 percent spending hike partially funded by a rise in the sales tax to 7 percent from 6 percent.
To be fair, Corzine's budget increase is due in part to his commitment to replenish the pension fund, which former governors such as Richard Codey, James E. McGreevey and Christie Whitman didn't do in a meaningful way. Their budgets essentially saddled today's taxpayers with the tab for past promises to public employees.
In a poll conducted by The Record for this story, three out of four
Lawmakers may be hearing that. This summer the Legislature is supposed to meet in special session to tackle property tax reform.
But some possible solutions remain taboo. Woe unto the legislator who so much as suggests that unionized government workers accept givebacks or otherwise help the state deal with its budget problems. When Sen. Stephen M. Sweeney,
Sweeney said, however, he expects that many of the same politicians who bashed him will be forced by circumstances to come around. He's pushing for the Legislature to discuss employee compensation at the special session this summer.
"A lot of my legislative colleagues agree with me but don't want to go through the nonsense I'm going through," Sweeney said. "But guess what? I'm still standing, still pushing, and you'll see a lot more legislators coming over to my way of thinking because taxpayers are demanding it."
Many factors pump up the state budget, but any attempt to rein in costs without addressing compensation is likely to fail.
"Public employee unions are a special breed that don't give up anything willingly, and anyone who asks them to becomes an instant pariah," said Ramsey Mayor Richard Muti.
Spiral of blame
How did we get to this point? Can we blame the workers? They're paid what government employers are willing to pay them. Can we blame the unions? They're doing what unions do -- protecting and promoting the interests of their members.
Said Codey, a West Orange Democrat who's the Senate president: "Has the Legislature ever increased property taxes? I never voted to raise property taxes. I'm not a school board member. I'm not a mayor."
Agreed Sen. Robert Singer, R-Lakewood: "Mayors are trying to find any way they can to blame somebody else for rising property taxes."
It's true that mayors and council members have not held the line against growing compensation. Due to inexperience, lack of nerve or a genuine belief that public employee raises are more important than keeping taxes low, they haven't stuck together in the same way their union adversaries have. They've failed to offer a credible counterweight to union strength.
"The easiest thing to do in municipal government is to agree with all the loud groups and you'll be reelected and your taxes will continue to skyrocket," said Emerson Mayor Steve Setteducati.
But in the Record poll, 41 percent of respondents blamed the state for their swelling tax bills, making the governor and state lawmakers the top-ranked villains.
There's wisdom in their choice. State officials have made sure that in the delicate balance of contract negotiations, the police and teachers unions have a thumb on the scale.
State officials are the ones who established the Public Employment Relations Commission -- nicknamed PERC -- and gave police the right to settle contracts by binding arbitration, which routinely awards cops annual base-pay raises of 4 percent.
They're the ones who then enacted the "cap law," which limits the percentage municipal budgets can increase every year -- 2.5 percent, or 3.5 percent if a town council passes a special ordinance -- while the cost of health benefits grew 13.3 percent last year, according to the state Chamber of Commerce.
They're the ones who stripped school boards of the right to impose their last best offer on teachers in the event of a deadlock in contract negotiations, robbing taxpayers of an important negotiating tool without requiring anything from teachers in return.
They're the ones who created the State Health Benefits Program, which pays every cent of the health insurance for more than half the workers in the plan.
They're the ones who established a pension system that paid out $4.2 billion in benefits last year, according to the Division of Pension and Benefits -- up from $2.5 billion in 2000 and $1.8 billion in 1996 -- and then approved budget after budget that failed to fund those pensions.
They're the ones who in the past three years received $951,915 in campaign contributions from the NJEA, $329,425 from state trooper organizations and $218,495 from the state PBA.
So we have unions that look out for teachers and police and we have a Legislature that looks out for teachers and police and we have nobody with any real clout looking out for the taxpayer, who is now shelling out an additional penny in sales tax -- a 17 percent increase -- on top of a hefty bump in property taxes.
Corzine, in his somber budget address in March, called for non-unionized state workers to skip their cost-of-living salary increases this year, a cutback the Legislature approved. He also wanted non-union workers, most of them supervisors, to make a 10 percent contribution toward their benefits. Lawmakers didn't go along with that.
State Treasurer Bradley Abelow said those provisions were a foreshadowing of topics the Corzine administration planned to discuss with union negotiators when bargaining begins, as soon as this fall, for new contracts. Current contracts are due to expire in June 2007.
"The unions know full well the implications as far as how we'd be thinking going into upcoming contract talks," Abelow said. "We'll be talking about salaries, pension reform and a series of issues concerning health care."
By law, pensions can't be cut, Abelow said, and until bargaining begins, "not much can be done about salaries." He said he hopes the Legislature, in its special session this summer, passes laws against pension sweetening and other abuses.
"We hope they take a look at things they didn't want to tackle this spring," he said.
In the meantime, Corzine maintains a close relationship with the unions his treasurer says will be asked to make concessions in a few months. The governor's budget was so well-received by the public unions that three of them -- the NJEA, the Communications Workers of America and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME -- all chipped in to run a barrage of radio and TV commercials and a direct-mail campaign in support of its passage.
"It's unprecedented for the three unions to work so closely together, and the reason we're doing that is we all share the same concerns," said CWA spokesman Bob Master.
When members of public unions rallied in
Sweeney, the business representative for an 800-member ironworkers union as well as a state senator, said that instead of firing up the crowd, Corzine should have been meeting with union leaders and asking them for concessions -- now.
"Governor Corzine was wrong for at least not asking them to come back to the table and be part of the solution," Sweeney said. "They say budget time is not the right time to do that, but of course it's the right time to do it. That's when we're dealing with finances."
Sweeney said there is plenty the Legislature can do in its summer session, such as raise the state employee retirement age to 60 from 55, increase medical co-pays for new hires and reduce the number of holidays for state workers.
"I told the unions they're going to lose those benefits," Sweeney said. "The Legislature and the unions created this mess together, so we should fix it together.
"I'm a union guy," Sweeney added. "A friend can tell you the truth."
No numbers
How much do the cops and teachers in your town make? Don't stress if you're clueless. You're in good company.
In the Record poll, the majority of 1,100 registered voters guessed way low. Just one in three came even close to what experienced cops are paid in their town.
Public vs. private
Police officers in northeast
Taxpayer wages1: $80,423 $54,980
Base police pay2: $85,028 $75,064
Teacher salaries3: $62,707 $60,011
1 Wage earnings from 2002 income reported to the IRS, adjusted to 2004 dollars.
2 Three-year average (2003-2005) from
3 Full-time teachers and other certified education staff, not including principals or other administrators, from the state Department of Education.
For teachers, the results were even more striking. While correctly noting that teachers don't make as much as cops, almost all respondents said a fully experienced classroom teacher earns less than $60,000. In fact, a teacher with a master's degree at the top of the pay scale typically makes in excess of $80,000.
There's good reason for the discrepancy. It's not as if information on what public-sector employees make is readily available -- even though the law specifically says it should be.
The Record requested computerized payroll records from every town and school board in the 93 municipalities that make up the paper's circulation area. We received them from fewer than 20 percent.
Some towns balked at reporters' requests for electronic access, saying they kept the payroll records on paper. But when reporters visited a handful of municipal offices to take a look at them, the records weren't available. Other towns said they didn't have the information, that it was in the hands of contractors who process their payroll.
Even when the information is at hand, it's often confusing, if not misleading. Town councils pass "salary ordinances" that are written with a wide range, even though the person actually in the job makes the maximum. Contracts typically calling for a 4 percent annual raise for police also provide new patrolmen with scheduled salary adjustments, known as "horizontal increases," that can triple a rookie's pay in five years. Longevity -- derided by critics as the "breathing bonus" -- can add 10 percent or more to the pay scale for senior employees, but is often detailed separately from salary scales.
"The public has been deceived," said Washington Township Mayor Rudy Wenzel. "A patrolman who makes an $85,000 salary really makes $97,000 with all the add-ons."
It's no better in
What we found: Over the past three years, the state paid out more than $600 million in overtime.
Lacking this most basic payroll information, many of us haven't been able to make the connection between the checks we write to Town Hall and the extraordinary compensation public employees receive.
Uneven playing field
Local officials say they have little chance at the bargaining table to halt mushrooming costs. Police and teachers unions mine decades of institutional memory and peruse the details of recent and ongoing contract talks statewide. The PBA calls upon attorneys like Richard Loccke, who's compiled an impressive winning streak, while the NJEA has specially trained and battle-hardened field representatives available on a phone call's notice.
By contrast, town council and school board members turn over every three or four years. Many have little or no experience hammering out labor contracts. Some worry the public may think they're being too tough. Once the signs reading "Save Our Cops" or "Support Our Teachers" start sprouting on their neighbors' lawns, their resolve softens.
"If the Legislature can't stand up to the teachers union, what hope can a little local board have against them?" said Mark Bombace, president of the
Unions know the advantage of negotiating with 566 separate towns and 593 different school districts around the state. The results are contracts so generous they would have been inconceivable a generation ago. So the unions champion home rule and squelch any talk of regionalization. Two years ago, when Emerson and Westwood talked about combining police forces, PBA members from around the region packed meetings to denounce the plan. The towns caved.
"The PBA made the argument that residents would see strange faces in the police cars," said Westwood Mayor Thomas Wanner. "Well, there are many residents that don't know the faces of the police force like they used to. They're too busy working, trying to pay property taxes, to get to know their police officers."
Binding arbitration hands the advantage to the police unions. Mayors, council members and labor attorneys hired by municipalities know that arbitrators are likely to award raises well above municipal spending caps and the rate of inflation. It's considered a victory when they can get the police union to settle at the negotiating table and thereby avoid arbitration, which can add $50,000 or more to their legal fees.
Arbitration also skews salaries for other public employees, said Wayne Mayor Scott Rumana.
"If you know the going rate [for police raises] is 4 or 4¼ percent, and you're fighting to get it below 4 percent, you're not going to turn around to the other unions and get them to agree to a 1 percent raise," Rumana said. "With the tools we're stuck with, we do our best."
Arbitration also encourages unions to engage in a practice known as "whipsawing" -- persuading one town to agree to a higher pay rate and then arguing to an arbitrator that a neighboring town has an obligation to pay equivalently.
"The whole negotiating process is slanted toward the upward movement of salaries," said Sen. Gerald Cardinale, R-Demarest.
Clout with lawmakers
It's not difficult to root out the source of union power. The NJEA, for instance, has nearly 200,000 members. According to its own figures, 93 percent of them voted in 2004.
So did their families. And their friends.
The NJEA has parlayed its sway with the Legislature into a virtual monopoly on education policy. In many cases, that's a good thing. In some cases, it involves protecting the union more than it involves protecting quality education. The most obvious cases are its resistance to merit pay and its defense of tenure job-protection rights, instituted in 1909.
"Tenure protects the bad and the mediocre. It protects the good, but they don't need protection," said Joseph R. Morano, an attorney with the
Like the police, teachers play one town against the other. They can pressure a school board to relent on important issues like health benefits by playing on trustees' concerns about competitiveness.
"If you're looking for a job, where are you going to go? Not to the district that makes you pay," said Robert Baxer, a former Ramsey school trustee. "No district wants to be the first one that does it because they'll be losing out on hiring the best and brightest teachers coming in. And it would be impossible to get experienced teachers from another district."
If municipal officials feel any resentment over the untouchable status of public employees, most of them don't talk about it. They fear a backlash -- their words may come back to haunt them in an upcoming negotiation or election. Residents, too, hesitate to criticize teachers and police.
"What person is going to get up at a public meeting and say, 'Mr. Mayor, you're wise for doing that' when you have the chief of police saying he doesn't want to do that?" asked Alfred Murphy Jr., former mayor, councilman and school board member in Hillsdale. "Same with teachers. I had teachers come in with black armbands because we let people go. And that intimidates some people. Getting tough will cost you because the police and teachers are very effective at playing to the audience, the public."
Staff Writers Benjamin Lesser, Adrienne Lu, Monsy Alvarado and Maya Kremen contributed to this article. E-mail: ivry@northjersey.com
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Unions drive a hard bargain
Second of six parts Imagine negotiations for a teachers contract as a poker game. In a saloon in the Old West. On one side sit the teachers. On the other the school board. Music plays. A bottle is passed around. A dispute breaks out. An angry gambler flips over the table. The teachers reach for their ultimate weapon – an illegal strike -- and draw. School board trustees reach for their holsters, too.
But there's nothing there. That's how it's been since the passage of an obscure law in July 2003. The law revoked the right of school boards to unilaterally impose a "last best offer" on teachers in the event negotiations reach a dead end. "With 'last best offer,' at least there was some leverage," said Charles Reilly, former president of the Ridgewood Board of Education. "Right now, there's no level playing field. By taking away the last best offer, one side will have to give in. And it will usually be the board." School trustees aren't the only ones who feel caught one weapon short. Mayors and town council members say legislators have made it tough for them, too. They say the arbitration process, overseen by So when it comes to contract negotiations, the high-stakes poker games that largely determine property taxes, local officials know who holds the best cards: the unions that represent the majority of their employees, the Policemen's Benevolent Association and the New Jersey Education Association. Cops and teachers who, a generation ago, were underpaid and overworked are now enjoying compensation and working conditions that are the envy of the private sector. Experienced patrolmen in Their unions achieved their status through hard work, savvy use of public relations, lots of cash pumped into legislative and gubernatorial campaigns and a dose of good old-fashioned union solidarity. The two labor groups now wield the clout to drive law-enforcement and education policy -- and, in part, determine tax rates -- throughout The political influence of But a Record poll, conducted last month, found that those numbers understated their potential voting strength. Thirty-eight percent of randomly chosen respondents said they live in a household where significant income is derived from public employment. Government workers are more likely to vote than private-sector workers, according to the poll, by a margin of 66 percent to 48 percent. And their views differ significantly from the general population on issues such as privatization of government services and merit pay. The NJEA has been called the most powerful union in the state, and it's not difficult to see why. The union, which represents teachers and school support staff in all but five New Jersey districts, says that 93 percent of its nearly 200,000 members cast ballots in the 2004 election, compared with 73 percent of New Jersey's registered voters in general. More than 1,100 teachers answered their union's call and volunteered at least three hours to a legislative campaign between the Saturday before the election and Election Day 2005. "The teachers union makes the Teamsters look like pussycats," said Alan R. Geisenheimer, one-time president of the Bergen County School Boards Legislative Committee. "The question I would ask, is there any legislation the NJEA has asked for that they haven't gotten? I don't know of any." NJEA leaders agree they have uncommon access to the corridors of power. Unlike some other public employee unions, whose members are concentrated around NJEA executive director Robert Bonazzi said the union's sway is based on its integrity. "We can be trusted," Bonazzi said. "We have interests and we pursue them in the most ethical way we possibly can, so people in the Legislature feel good about the NJEA." No doubt the union supports many worthwhile programs: smaller class sizes, family involvement in education and courses to upgrade the skills of its members. But it also doesn't hurt that the NJEA is among the top political action committees contributing to legislative and gubernatorial races -- $1.5 million over the past three years, according to state records. The state PBA kicked in $218,495 over the same period. "To some of my colleagues in the Senate, the teachers union is tangible and the general pub- lic is not," said Sen. Gerald Cardinale, R-Demarest. "The teachers union is a monolithic force; the public is not." 'A big stick' It wasn't actual imposition of the last best offer that gave school boards leverage, trustees say. It was the threat. Between 1968 and 2003, boards imposed contracts just 15 times, according to the state Public Employment Relations Commission. Thousands of teachers' contracts were hammered out over that time. "It was more of a big stick," said Vincent Giordano, the assistant executive director of the NJEA. In fact, imposition often caused teachers to walk out. Both sides say an illegal 2001 teachers strike in In place of last best offer, the law established a structure for continued talks. There have been no teacher strikes since the law went into effect. Teachers say that's a good thing. Trustees say not necessarily. "It may be because settlements have been uniformly high," said Malachi J. Kenney, a Red Bank attorney who represents school boards. "The unions haven't had a good reason to strike." The bill was co-sponsored by former Gov. Richard Codey, in his role as a Democratic state senator from West Orange, and Robert Singer, a Republican senator from Singer said the NJEA didn't support him early in his Senate career, which began in 1993. Since 2001, however, he has received $9,800 in campaign contributions from the teachers union and its political action committee, according to state records. Codey said the measure was necessary to correct a leverage imbalance that favored school boards over their employees in negotiations. "The board's ability to impose its last best offer is not fair to employees who don't have the ability to strike," Codey said. The NJEA's Giordano said that in order to get the law passed, the union employed the same tactics with legislators that it uses in negotiations for teacher contracts. "It couldn't have been a more traditional bargaining process as far as I was concerned," Giordano said. "There was a give-and-take and an exchange." When asked what concessions the union had to make to get the legislation passed, Giordano said, "We didn't have to give up anything on that." Willing to intimidate Teachers and police know the work they do gives them unique standing in a community. What could be more important than teaching our children and safeguarding our families? Where is a community more vulnerable? When push comes to shove, unions haven't been shy about using their emotional edge to get school boards and town councils to knuckle under to their demands. With varying degrees of subtlety, cops use the power of the badge to shape policy. Teachers, too, can influence the direction of contract negotiations in their daily interactions with students -- refusing to write college recommendations or grade papers at home. True abuses of that power are rare. But the potential for abuse can color a town's dealings with its most valued employees. Take, for example, the nasty two-year turf battle between Emerson cops and the town's governing body. The bad blood stemmed from a plan in 2004 to consolidate the Emerson force with Westwood's and the county police. The next year, the mayor and his allies on the council tangled with the police over the department changing to 12-hour work days. Then, on Feb. 7, in a cost-cutting move, the council voted to lay off Officer Daniel Kalyoussef. Ten days later, Officer Mark Savino stopped Councilman Frank Milone for an obstructed license plate. The next day, he stopped Councilman Brian Todd for allegedly going 46 mph in a 25 mph zone. Milone and Todd had voted to lay off Kalyoussef. Both councilmen contested the tickets. Milone filed a complaint against the officer, saying the offending dealer plate frame had been on his vehicle for five years and he had never been cited for it -- until he ticked off the Emerson police. On June 9, Superior Court Judge Roy McGeady ruled that Milone's ticket was valid, forcing the councilman to drop his complaint against the officer. However, McGeady added, "I did believe there was some evidence of selective enforcement." Milone is appealing. "I doubt I would have been pulled over if I wasn't a councilman," he said. Todd's case is scheduled for a hearing July 28. The appearance of a payback bothers Emerson Police Chief Michael Saudino. "Do I think the officer fabricated the violations? No," Saudino said. "But I'm not happy with the timing of the summonses. I care about the perception of the police department. I would never want it to be said that we retaliate." To Emerson Mayor Steve Setteducati, however, there was no doubt about the officer's motives. "There's an intimidation factor there," Setteducati said. "It's nuts what's going on. Absolutely nuts. When you tell people, they don't believe you." Michael J. Madonna, president of the state PBA, said a police officer would never retaliate because "he would be hung out to dry." "Cops are always being Monday-morning-quarterbacked," Madonna said. "People are always pointing the finger. If a cop retaliated, it would be on the front page, it would be on the back page, it would be all over the paper." Standing united Most public officials -- and 52 percent of The police union wins big in contract negotiations because it presents a united front against towns that don't always communicate with each other and, in some cases, have bargaining committees that are far less experienced at police contracts than Loccke and his associates. Said Mark Ruderman, an attorney who represents towns like Emerson in negotiations with police: "PBAs raise their money by going door to door and getting contributions from citizens, and a good amount of what they raise goes to good causes. The rest of the money goes to hire lawyers to fight the towns." The PBA shapes policy, too. It was the raucous opposition of PBA members -- from both inside and outside the affected towns -- that helped derail discussion about regionalizing police in Emerson and Westwood. "They distracted the public," said Westwood Mayor Thomas Wanner. "Because of the upheaval due to the stirring of the pot by the PBA, we never got a true analysis and we'll never know what kind of savings we could or could not have had." According to Wanner and Setteducati, his counterpart in Emerson, the PBA ignored a proposal to merge the two towns' police departments and glommed onto the more controversial issue of the forces being absorbed by the county police. Emerson and Westwood police distributed lawn signs that read "Save Our Cops" and discussed their opinions with residents during work hours, the mayors said. They recruited PBA members from neighboring towns to attend public meetings, where they boisterously opposed the plan. Wanner and Setteducati both say the police played dirty. "I felt intimidated," Wanner said. "They followed me from my home to my office. I was pulled over in other towns. For what purpose except for intimidation?" "I was physically threatened several times," Setteducati said. "I had police officers telling me to watch my back, you'll get it when you leave this meeting. These are Emerson police officers." Mike McDermott, the head of the police union local, could not be reached for comment. Setteducati claims the consolidation could have saved Emerson $1.3 million out of a total budget at the time of $7 million. In the end, the town of 7,400 voted overwhelmingly -- 76 percent to 24 percent -- to halt discussion of any police merger. Westwood residents never got a chance to vote up or down. The issue died before it went to a referendum. "What I find most frustrating is the public doesn't question why a union argues a position," Wanner said. "The only reason a union will spend dues money to argue for or against a particular issue is to secure their members' position in a future negotiation." Pressure point As has happened elsewhere, the first thing that disgruntled That's one of the pressure points for members of the community, who are ostensibly the teachers' bosses but still are vulnerable if the teachers decide to play hardball. In "I got several calls and e-mails from people saying we were doing a good job but they didn't want to go public with that," Reilly said. "Clearly, there were a lot of parents who felt they couldn't take a public position for fear -- unfounded, I think -- of retribution by the teachers." The 2002 First, teachers refused to write recommendations. Teachers brought no work home. They packed board meetings wearing red T-shirts bearing the union logo. They gathered at Then came the threat of a strike. "Our biggest job action was working the contracted seven-hour, 35-minute day," said Maria Cannon, a Ridgewood middle school teacher who has since become president of the local. "That set the community on its ear, because they know most of us go above and beyond." The snag in negotiations, Reilly said, was health benefits. The school board wanted to cover new teachers with a different health plan than the one that covered other teachers. It was identical to the old plan, Reilly said, but it was written by a different insurance carrier. Within four or five years, he said, it would have saved the district $600,000 out of a total of $3.5 million in annual health-care costs. The teachers balked. "What was communicated to us by union leaders was that the health coverage they were offering wasn't good enough," Cannon said. "We totally wanted to help The teachers got what they wanted. Last summer, when the contract expired, they got what they wanted again -- no new health insurance carrier for new hires. "You're looking at a board of five members against the Ridgewood Education Association, which has 450 members, and the NJEA, with almost 200,000, and it's not a fair fight," said Mark Bombace, the current Maybe the first shots in that revolt already have been fired. In April's elections, 256 school budgets around the state were defeated, the highest number since 1994. Staff Writers Benjamin Lesser, Adrienne Lu, Maya Kremen and Deena Yellin contributed to this article. E-mail: ivry@northjersey.com |
Timing was everything for NJEA power broker
Monday, July 17, 2006
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Vincent Giordano's salary was $5,100 in 1964, the year he started as a social studies teacher in
It turned out to be $5,200.
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"So I counted on my one hand, the other hand, and all my toes and I said, 'This is not going to cut it at that pace,' " Giordano said.
So he went to work for the union.
Talk about timing.
In 1968, the Legislature gave teachers the right to bargain collectively. A bloodless revolution was at hand. Giordano -- whose father had told him that, except for the priesthood, teaching was the most respectable profession -- was a
Today, in his office in the New Jersey Education Association's building across
Teachers are doing well. Not as well as he'd like -- never as well as he'd like. Starting salary for an
Teachers' health insurance is paid by school districts throughout the state. Pensions are comfortable. And in
Giordano, as much as anyone, made that happen.
Other unions, like the AFL-CIO, are splintering. The United Auto Workers are mulling serious givebacks to help bail out failing employers and the Longshoremen are watching their leaders get hauled off to prison for corruption.
Not Giordano's union. The NJEA, which represents teachers and other school workers in all but five districts in the state, has kept its nose clean. It's gone from four field offices in the late 1960s to 22 today. From 75,000 members in 1971 to nearly 200,000 in 2006. It's well-organized. It's democratic. It's run by the members.
Giordano, as much as anyone, made that happen, too.
Now he's the assistant executive director -- boss of all 57 field reps in the state. Gone are the days when he could use his fingers and toes as an abacus to calculate his annual pay raise. Although he won't say how much he earns, Giordano wears nice suits and lives in a home in Watchung that's assessed at $1.1 million.
The two Vinces
Giordano downplays his accomplishments. That's the union way. A lot of people had a hand in the NJEA's success, he'll tell you. But he's been a major-league force.
"In our corner of the world, we built the NJEA," said Vincent Perna, who partnered with Giordano in the union's
The two Vinces, they were called. They worked out of
They got a head start on the school boards in the years after collective bargaining came in. They wrote the boilerplate for the contracts, some of which is still used today. They plotted out the yearly raises teachers would get. They figured out how to preserve free medical coverage. They persuaded school districts to give teachers 24 hours' notice before evaluations and allow teachers to challenge bad reviews.
And though Giordano will tell you the school boards have caught up, it's not true. The advantage exploited by Giordano and Perna in the late 1960s and early 1970s is a legacy that persists to this day.
Giordano and Perna. The two Vinces. One played Good Vince, the other Bad, Perna said.
"I was the 'Let's go throw a can in the front door and see how big the explosion is and see if we can fix it,' " Perna said. "He was more 'Let's see if we can massage this into place and see if we can do it without an explosion.' "
Still, Perna noted, Giordano "presided over more strikes in
In the most memorable,
'The R word'
Those hard-won raises set the tone for the rest of the region, and marked the beginning of the end of the days of the poorly paid public-school teacher.
Giordano, as much as anyone, made that happen.
How did he do it? Relationships, he'll tell you. It's all about relationships.
"That's my word, the R word," Giordano said. "This business, this process of negotiations, is basically about relationships. Developing and nurturing relationships. It's about some technical stuff, too -- you have to kind of know what you're talking about. But ultimately it gets down to your ability to develop a working relationship with someone so they feel comfortable."
Relationships.
"One of the things about bargaining is it's about relating to people," said Lester Aron, an attorney with Sills, Cummis in
Relationships. Built over plates of osso buco and bottles of merlot in every decent Italian restaurant from Moonachie to Mahwah.
"When Vince was a field rep, he knew all the best Italian restaurants and enjoyed them all," Aron said. "Whenever we ate together, we'd go to a place he knew and I didn't."
Perna remembers that, too -- a revolution fueled by pasta and marinara.
"Vince subscribed, and still does, that there's no problem a good bottle of wine can't fix," he said.
E-mail: ivry@northjersey.com
