Labor & Employment Law

35,000 Rally Against New Jersey Budget Cuts

By James Parks

More than 35,000 people?including workers from dozens of unions and activists from more than 100 community groups?last Saturday told New Jersey’s Republican Gov. Chris Christie that he cannot balance the state’s budget on the backs of the middle class.

The “Stand Up” rally, one of the largest-ever protests at the state capitol in Trenton, sent a clear message that New Jersey working people reject Christie’s budget cuts and believe the path to getting the state back on track is through job growth and doing more to help the state’s most vulnerable families.

Carrying signs with messages such as “Restore The Cuts” and “Christie’s Budget Cuts Hurt the Vulnerable, Helps the Millionaires,” marchers filled the square in front of the state House as far as you could see. 

35,000 people rallied against New Jersey Gov. Christie’s budget cuts.

New Jersey State AFL-CIO President Charles Wowkanech said Christie’s budget and “tool kit” (a package of 33 bills the governor wants enacted to “rein in” the cost of government):

constitute an unprecedented attack on collective bargaining and workers. 

Wowkanech says the rally is only the beginning of a unified effort to oppose the governor’s policies.

Together, we demonstrated our renewed strength and resolve, to work toward fair and sensible solutions for New Jersey.

Christie is proposing bills to cap increases in public employee wages and benefits at 2.5 percent annually, which would be more than eaten up by the rising cost of health care. Christie’s legislative package also would:

• Place a 2.5 percent cap on local government budget increases, which would stall or eliminate investment in infrastructure projects.
• Allow local governments to opt-out of civil service via referendum and remove certain employees from civil service outright.
• Prohibit negotiations on such issues as furloughs, and change arbitration rules for police and fire by requiring awards to not exceed the 2.5 percent cap and force arbitrators to include the impact of contracts on property taxes.

Barbara Keshishian, president of the New Jersey Education Association, summed up the goals of the marchers when she told the crowd:

There is a time to fight and that time has now come. 

For more information on the rally, click here and here.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on May 24, 2010 (boomark / email).