Christie to Public-Employee Unions: No Contracts, No Step Increases in Salaries

The administration takes a tough stand on step increases, but unions argue that incremental pay is typically paid without a signed and sealed contract

Gov. Chris Christie has taken an aggressive approach to dealing with public workers and their unions since taking office in early 2010. He’s encouraged voters to reject school budgets in communities where teachers weren’t accepting pay freezes, pushed to change civil-service rules, and signed legislation that forced employees to pay more toward to their pensions and health benefits.

Now that Christie has joined the 2016 GOP presidential primary field, his administration is taking another tough stance. It recently told thousands of union members whose contracts expired June 30 that they won’t be receiving annual incremental pay increases while there’s no new deal in place.

In the past, the unions say workers have generally received their annual increases if their performance merited the bump -- even without a contract in place.

Christie’s freeze affects state office workers, college professors, corrections officers, and other groups of public workers who haven’t yet reached the top of their pay scales.

Public-worker unions have been responding to the Christie administration's new position on pay increments -- something many view as a pressure tactic -- by filing administrative grievances and at least one union, Policemen’s Benevolent Association Local 105, has filed suit in Superior Court.

Lance Lopez, the president of PBA Local 105, said the Christie administration’s freeze affects 3,700 members of his union. The prior agreement with the state said that the rules established under a contract that expired on June 30 would be extended for a year if no new agreement was reached, he said. And the union would have had to have been informed in writing by February 1, 2015 of any change, which didn’t occur, he added.

“In the past they’ve always maintained these step increments,” Lopez said. “We believe that it’s a violation of the agreement that we had.”

The Christie administration’s position on step pay comes at when the amount public employees contribute to their healthcare coverage is starting to become a hot issue. That’s because of a four-year sunset provision on healthcare contributions that was a part of the 2011 law that forced them to pay more toward both pensions and health benefits. For now, the status quo remains in effect, but because of the sunset provision, healthcare contributions will be back up for negotiation as contracts come up for renewal.

For Christie, a second-term Republican, dealing aggressively with public-workers has been a hallmark of his tenure.

Just months after taking office amid the recession in early 2010, he encouraged voters in school elections to reject budgets when teachers had not accepted the pay freeze he called for at the time. He also proposed a series of civil-service changes and has continued pushing against some employee job protections. And in 2011, he worked with Democratic legislative leaders to pass the bill forcing employees to contribute more toward their pensions and health benefits.

By taking the stance that workers are no longer entitled to step increases, the Christie administration appears to be adopting a position that the state Public Employment Relations Commission took last year in a case in Atlantic County, in which the local government was in a labor dispute with sheriff’s department officers. The commission upheld the county’s position that it did not have to follow the practice of adhering to step increments when a contract has expired.

“We have acted appropriately and fully within the law,” said Christie spokesman Brian Murray, when asked about the freezing the pay increments and the union lawsuit filed against the state.

And the pay-increment issue has heated up just as the four-year sunset provision in the June 2011 worker-benefits reform law, which is commonly referred to as Chapter 78, has started to become a factor in labor-contract negotiations at all levels in the state. That’s because contracts are now starting to and will continue to come up for renewal in which the health contributions are no longer simply mandated by the 2011 law.

Chapter 78 is the same law that called for the state to increase its own contributions to the chronically underfunded public-employee pension system over a seven-year term to reach the full amount that actuaries say is necessary to restore the pension system’s health.

Source: NJ Spotlight