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."
Triple Congressional pay on the grounds that they don't come in to work... I like where this is going...
The government employees are the REASON that NJ is $4.5B in debt and they were protesting in the streets about losing two days pay? Unbelievable. Its like a drug dealer asking to get his drugs back after a liberal judge lets him off the hook for technicality - and the police being ordered to turn over the drugs.
Unbelievable.
Well, if they are going to pay them, it should come out of the the Gov's and the legislator's salaries.
Was there ever any doubt about this?
Let's see...NJ is broke, so it had to raise taxes, so they will pay 40,000 state employees for an extra week of vacation. I'm sure this makes perfect sense to vote-buying Democrats and their union bosses. Why would any sane person stay in NJ to be a tax slave for these crooks?
What liberal hogwash. It wasn't a lockout, it was a lay off due to lack of cash. Layoffs do occur with union jobs. Someone needs to investigate to see if the Governor and the union conspired on this beforehand.
Not a surprise to me. I knew they would be.
Raise taxes for everbody 1%.
Give back .05% to homeowners.
Pay people for not working>
But according to Democrats this is not a tax cut for the rich?
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