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March 24, 2006
State workers in New Jersey represented by CWA are fighting
for full funding of their pension plan as the governor
grapples with the economic fallout from years of Republican
tax cuts during the 1990s.
Gov. Jon Corzine, elected last fall with strong union
support, has so far directed to the pension fund about
two-thirds of the $1.8 billion contribution required this
year. But the plan's neglect during the tenure of Republican
Gov. Christine Whitman has left it with an unfunded
liability of $12 billion to $30 billion, according to
varying estimates.
"The $1.8 billion represents just the first down payment on
what is really needed to insure that state workers' pensions
will be there when they retire," District 1 Vice President
Chris Shelton said, blaming the billions in liability on
"accounting gimmickry and sheer irresponsibility" of past
state leaders.
In addition to the pension crisis, the state budget faces a
$2.8 billion shortfall in the coming fiscal year. Corzine is
calling for raising the state's sales tax by one point, to 7
percent, among other remedies.
Republicans immediately began trashing Corzine's plan,
including a nasty newspaper column by former Gov. Whitman on
Friday blasting his effort to balance jobs and services with
a mild tax increase. "Rather than eliminating wasteful
spending and rooting out waste in government, New Jersey
families are being forced to bear the burden of balancing
the budget," Whitman wrote.
With a Democratic assembly and Senate and Corzine in the
governor's office, CWA state workers are hopeful that the
leaders they've supported will stand up to Republican
outcry.
Bob Master, CWA District 1 legislative and political
director, said workers generally feel Corzine is trying to
address the long-term budget problems and, in backing a
sales tax hike, has shown a willingness to do what's fair
and necessary even if it's politically unpopular. But if
that changes or doesn't go far enough, he said workers are
prepared to do battle to protect their job security,
pensions and benefits.
New Jersey's problems aren't unique. Many states are facing
budget and pension crises brought on by factors that include
tax cuts and a reduction in federal aid to states. In the
wake of reduced and eliminated pension plans at private
companies from GM to Verizon, public workers fear that their
retirement funds will be next.
"Spiraling health costs, budget shortfalls and a looming
wave of baby boomer retirements are prompting policymakers
to ask whether government should follow private industry's
lead," stated an article in the Atlantic City paper
examining the New Jersey crisis.
A unit of 129 professional employees at the New Jersey
Housing Mortgage and Finance Agency won CWA representation
this week and joined the ranks of Local 1032 under New
Jersey's new card check organizing law.
The group is the biggest unit so far to unionize under a
law that allows card check union certification for public
workers as well as some in the private sector who are not
covered by the National Labor Relations Act, according to
CWA Organizing Director Ed Sabol.
The agency is a quasi-state agency, but its employees are
considered public workers. The state Public Employee
Relations Commission certified the card count on March 22.
"It was a very hard-fought campaign," reported Sabol, who
cited the work of a strong inside committee assisted by
Local President Jim Marketti, organizers Mikki Santiago,
Patrick Kavanagh and Andy Tarlau, and District 1 Organizing
Coordinator Tim Dubnau.
Matt Lait and Scott Glover won the 2005 Heywood Broun Award
for their extensive reporting on a 20-year-old murder case
that resulted in even the prosecutor testifying as to his
doubts about the defendant's guilt, reported TNG-CWA
President Linda Foley.
The two Los Angeles Times reporters wrote "A Case of Doubt"
about a wrongly incarcerated man. Their work involved nine
months of research, dozens of interviews, a review of
thousands of pages of police and court records, and even a
reenactment of the murder scene that disproved key
prosecution claims.
The Broun award, named for TNG-CWA's founder and first
president, includes a plaque and $5,000 cash prize. This
year's awards will be presented on May 3 at the union's
Freedom Award Fund dinner in Washington, D.C. May 3 also
marks World Press Freedom Day, and the Herbert Block Freedom
Award, also with a $5,000 prize, will be presented to the
International Federation of Journalists Safety Fund for its
work to safeguard journalists around the globe.
Two reporters at Knight Ridder's Washington Bureau, Chris
Adams and Alison Young, won the Broun award of distinction —
which carries a $1,000 prize — for their examination of how
the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has neglected
American soldiers returning home from the war in Iraq.
In the broadcast division, Sasha Aslanian and Mike Edgerly
of American Radio Works and Minnesota Public Radio won the
award of distinction for their reporting on an environmental
hazard in Minnesota resulting from the widespread presence
of 3M's former Scotchgard chemicals.
TNG-CWA also recognizes achievement in journalism by a high
school and college student with the David S. Barr award.
Shahar Smooha, a student journalist at Columbia University,
and Sarah A. Halper, a student at the A.W. Dreyfoos School
of the Arts, West Palm Beach, Fla., are the winners of a
$1,500 and $500 scholarship, respectively.
Heywood Broun was the most prominent founder of the
American Newspaper Guild in 1934, a crusading columnist who
believed individual journalists have the power to cause
social change. The award was first presented for work done
in 1941 and is given annually in recognition of "individual
journalistic achievement by members of the working media,
particularly if it helps right a wrong or correct an
injustice."
A research team from Carnegie Mellon University published
findings this month bolstering the Association of Flight
Attendants-CWA's assertion that use of cell phones on planes
while in the air is dangerous.
Alarmingly, despite the fact that cell phone use currently
is banned during flight — although the Federal
Communications Commission is urging that the ban be lifted —
the researchers found that passengers in fact do violate the
ban right now. The investigators boarded 37 passenger
flights with equipment that measures radio frequency
emissions, and they detected that passengers were making
between one and four cell phone calls per flight.
The group's research into the effects of personal
electronic devices on aircraft electronic systems, according
to the Kansas City Star, prompted a warning that "continued
use of radio frequency emitting devices such as cell phones
will, in all likelihood, someday cause an accident by
interfering with critical cockpit instruments."
The team noted that a NASA database of pilot incident
reports cited 125 cases where interference from personal
electronic devices affected aircraft navigation systems and
other cockpit controls.
Last year, AFA-CWA President Pat Friend testified against
lifting the ban before a hearing of the U.S. House Aviation
Subcommittee, and the union also submitted a filing to the
FCC warning of both technical hazards and increased "air
rage" incidents if cell phones are allowed during flight.
The Carnegie Mellon study was published this month in a
technology magazine, IEEE Spectrum.
- To help ensure that citizens of New Orleans
displaced by last year's hurricanes have an opportunity to
vote in city elections set for April 22, CWA has distributed
information about registration for absentee ballots to
locals in the region and to those CWA members who applied
for disaster relief funds.
Any affected
members who did not receive this information should contact
Gwend Johnson at 202-434-1509 or by e-mail at
Gwendjoh@cwa-union.org.
- During the Clinton administration, a raise in
the federal minimum wage and two new tax credits for
low-income families helped millions of workers and meant
that a parent supporting two children on a minimum wage
paycheck was no longer living below the poverty line.
That's no longer the case. Today, the Economic Policy
Institute says, that same family is living at just 89
percent of the poverty level. "A minimum wage increase from
$5.15 to $7.25 would return the value of full-time work to
just above its 1997 level and renew the nation's commitment
to working families," EPI says in its weekly snapshot.
Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), long a champion of raising the
wage, is trying again with the Fair Minimum Wage Act. It
would raise the wage to $7.25 an hour over two years.
You can take action to support the bill by clicking the link
at the top of the AFL-CIO website,
www.aflcio.org
. To read the full EPI snapshot, go to
http://www.epinet.org/.
- The AFL-CIO's "Who's On Our Side" series has
issued its latest report cards, showing how working families
are faring in various states under what President George W.
Bush claims is a "healthy and vigorous" economy.
In Missouri, for instance, the state has suffered a net loss
of 15,100 jobs — mostly good-paying jobs in manufacturing
and communications — since Bush took office. The state's
average annual income, adjusted for inflation, has dropped
from $49,466 in 2000 to $42,094 in 2004.
In
Wisconsin, 566,000 state residents had no health insurance
in 2004 — more than three times as many who had no coverage
in 2000. In Minnesota, while private sector wages rose 15
percent between 1998 and 2003, premiums for family health
insurance at work jumped by a staggering 90.9 percent.
Read more and find the full reports on each state at
http://www.aflcio.org/.
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