Opinion: We must end Trenton’s anti-worker agenda

It’s budget season in Trenton and that means working people need to stay alert. Too often, this is the time of year when Trenton powerbrokers quietly push proposals that protect the wealthy and well-connected while sticking working families with the bill.

We’ve seen it happen again and again in recent weeks.

Late last month, the Department of the Treasury released a report claiming New Jersey’s state health insurance plans are in crisis. But instead of addressing the real drivers of rising costs like greedy insurance companies, hospitals and big pharma, the report jumps straight to demanding that workers pay more. There’s no attempt to address corporate profiteering. No plan to rein in the health care industry. Just more proposals to make public employees shoulder the burden. That’s not reform; it’s a profit-protecting giveaway to powerful special interests at the expense of working families.

But when it’s time for Trenton to stand up for those families, the silence is deafening.

Right now, a bill is stalled in the Legislature that would end a deeply unfair pension penalty. Under current law, public employees in the PERS or TPAF systems who take more than two years off to care for a child or family member are placed in the inferior Tier 5 pension when they return. This hits women especially hard because they are more likely to take extended leaves to care for loved ones. A bill to fix that injustice has already passed both the Assembly and the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support. But the Assembly still needs to take one final vote to concur with minor amendments. Despite weeks of outreach from affected workers, the Assembly refuses to act, leaving families in limbo again.

Another bill, introduced in both chambers and moving in the Senate, would restore health insurance coverage for public employees who suffer serious, long-term injuries. For decades, these workers retained their health benefits while on disability. But recently, the state began denying them coverage, invoking a highly questionable new interpretation of a decade-old statute. A majority of lawmakers agree that the state’s action was unreasonable and are ready to pass a bill to fix it. But Gov. Murphy’s office is demanding amendments that would once again deny too many injured workers the coverage they need. That’s a slap in the face to families already struggling with medical bills and lost income.

But while Trenton drags its feet on helping working people, it springs into action when insiders want a favor.

A new pension bill would give special treatment to a select group of municipal business administrators, letting them into the superior PERS pension, even though they don’t meet the current criteria. These are the same plans denied to thousands of lower-paid or part-time public workers, who are forced into the inferior DCRP, a 401(k)-style plan with far fewer benefits. We should be working to eliminate the DCRP entirely and ensure all public employees have access to a secure retirement, not handing out sweetheart deals to the politically connected.

This might be business as usual in Trenton, but it doesn’t have to be. Working people don’t have to accept a system that punishes us to protect the privileged. We get to choose who represents us.

That’s why we proudly stand with NJEA members across New Jersey in endorsing Sean Spiller for governor. Sean is a teacher who understands the challenges working families face. He’s a union president who has fought against the very abuses we’re seeing in Trenton right now. And he’s a leader who won’t forget who put him in office.

On June 10, we’re voting to change how Trenton does business. We’re voting for Sean Spiller to put working people first.

Steve Beatty is the NJEA Vice President, and Petal Robertson is the NJEA Secretary-Treasurer