Posted on 07/07/2006 6:58:51 PM PDT by Mannaggia l'America
New Jersey government workers who were idled this week because of the state shutdown might end up with an extra week of paid vacation.
Unions representing the 45,000 state workers ordered to stay home during the historic government shutdown are pushing for full pay for the lost work week.
"We feel we should not be penalized - we were willing and able to come to work," said Lisa Ciccone, business representative of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers-Local 195 which has 6,500 members. More than half of the state's 84,000 workers had been deemed "non-essential" during the crisis and were kept off the job since last Saturday. Gov. Corzine said he supports paying the furloughed workers.
"We believe that legally the state absolutely has to pay folks for the past week because it was a lockout, which is a breach of the contract," said Carla Katz, president of Local of Communication Workers of America-Local 1034 and former girlfriend of Corzine. CWA is the largest union and represents 40,000 state employees. Katz estimates the lost wages at $45-50 million.
Katz said the union is taking steps to pressure the Legislature to pass a special appropriation to issue the retroactive pay or to simply include it in the budget. If it is not authorized, she said, the union will take legal action to enforce the contract.
Meanwhile, the 45,000 casino workers who were furloughed during the crisis may be out of luck. Atlantic City casinos, which were shut on Wednesday, won't reopen until at least late tonight and workers can't recoup lost wages from a business that suffered when it is was forcibly closed, said Robert McDevitt, president of the Unite Here-Local 54, which represents 16,000 casino workers.
"The casino workers are the biggest losers in this big fiasco," said McDevitt. "They will have lost between $5 million and $7 million in wages before they are called back to work." He said most workers probably won't be called back until Tuesday.
McDevitt said Atlantic City is "like a ghost town" and it will take time to get the hotels reopened.
"This is like a natural disaster for the casinos and we can't hold them responsible for the lost wages," he said.
Rich Dann, president of CWA Local 1085 in Woodbury Heights, which represents state judiciary workers, said the union expects its workers to receive full paychecks, which are issued biweekly and which are due next Friday.
"We haven't heard anything further on whether they'll be paid for lost days or not, but we're proceeding on the assumption that people will be paid," he said.
Brian Davis, 38, of Trenton, a senior medical security officer at the Ann Klein Forensics Center, on the grounds of the Trenton Psychiatric Hospital, said he wasn't sure.
"I need the money to pay my mortgage," he said. "I have three kids and I work hard to keep my credit rating good. The state is messing it up."
Amazing how the liberal mob works, ain't it ???
Catering to his voter base I guess.
might?
this was always part of the plan - they all got a week off with pay.
What? No doubletime for the missed weekend?
Well that's going to save lots of money.
In Socialist America, just another lose lose situation for those who work hard play by the rules and pay taxes and pay more taxes. Politicians do not think twice about paying someone for not working, they all had Maynard G. Krebs as their idol growing up.
Might raise their demand to time and a half for mental anguish. PIGS!
"I need the money to pay my mortgage," he said. "I have three kids and I work hard to keep my credit rating good. The state is messing it up..."
Translated means: I don't have any savings and I expect you taxpayers to cover my ass...!
What the hell is a "senior medial security officer"? Does that mean he guards the elevator at the hospital?
So basically he says you can't come to work because we are short of money but we're going to pay you anyway?
Is this some new kind of economics?
It may have saved money, after all the gov. boobs weren't in their offices screwing things up.
It's government economics. It's not their money, so they don't give a hoot.
What should happen is that the week off should get deducted as vacation time from all of the employees. Then they can get paid. Vacation means time off with pay - why shouldn't it count as vacation time?
If they were going to pay them anyway, why didn't they just let them work?
I think this is just funny -- I hear so much more about the "almost" shutdown here in virginia than I did about New Jersey.
I just thank God anytime I don't get all the government I'm paying for.
He also shut down only the things that people like and that generate revenue.
Publicity stunt.
If he shut down the Department of Making Sure All The Union Thugs Have Comfortable Chairs, nobody would notice.
However, all the people who worked at the Casinos..on the Atlantic CIty Boardwalk, etc. Do you think they got paid for the week they didn't work??? Just ups my mantra that if I knew then what I know now I would have BEGGED fo a government job.
Then again, it shouldn't be that big a surprise. Who would ever think that a government would actually run out of taxpayer money to spend?
It's the only job where you really don't have to do anything but work on new ways to enslave the citizenry, there is no accountability, and you can't be fired even if you kill somebody.
Sounds like a pretty good gig until you realize it saps your soul.
Let's see: 45,000 people @ $40,000 a year salary plus 25% benefits equals $50,000 a year per person on average. Divide that by 50 weeks and it looks like the strike will cost NJ about $1,000 per person or about $45,000,000. Sweet deal if you can get it.
No, what he said was "you can't come to work because your elected officials are morons and can't sign a damn budget even though we have the money".
Frankly I think the people should get paid. It's not their fault the NJ government is a bunch of idiots who argued for weeks on end about stupid stuff causing the government to shut down. Pay with the wages the elected officials should have gotten for the months this budget argument was going on, the elected officials are the ones that didn't earn their pay, the grunt workers shouldn't get the shaft because the bosses are stupid.
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