Gov. Chris Christie is set to sign what he calls his biggest legislative accomplishment today.
The employee benefits bill requires more than 500,000 teachers, police and other public workers to pay part of their health care premiums based on their incomes. Their pension contributions also will also rise.
The state’s retirement systems are underfunded by $110 billion.
Christie says higher contributions are needed to guarantee future pensions.
The governor predicts that New Jersey’s fix will be hailed as a national model.
Public worker unions say the pension system is in the red primarily because the state has skipped its annual payment for years.
The new law requires the state to phase in its contribution.
(Source: NJ Star Ledger)
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14 Responses
About time too, these very lucrative pensions have been on and breaking the back of tax payers for years. No one in private industry would get pensions like government employees. Please a pensions equal to your last years salary or a percentage less while the rest of us have to get by with social security and savings.
TorrahTotty…your ignorance is painful. You gleefully follow the demagogue’s propoganda just as certain Europeans did their demagogues 80 years ago. Read this:
http://blog.nj.com/njv_bob_braun/2011/06/braun_pension_overhaul_unfairl.html
…from yesteday’s Star Ledger
Reality; No employer can pay a person 60 years for 30 years of work. No employer can pay a person 50 years for 30 years of work. No employer can pay 100% of pensions, and or 100% of health care cost. In private industry it went up and now it is going down. In the 50’s an employer paid his worker’s health insurance and not his family until finally the employer paid for everything. It was $100 deductible and it is been on the raise to $300, $500 or more. Teachers get
medical, pension and part they pay, dental, optical. When they retire they continue to receive these benefits; somebody has to pay for this. GM went bankrupt since it could not paid the retire workers benefit package. People have to be reasonable. When you hire a worker how much can you reasonably pay him or her. We have to have pension packages and health insurance packages but there has to be limits; and if you want more you put in also.
To number 2 enjoy your yellow journalism you must be a union member or government employee. What I wrote and number 3 wrote are facts of history. Unions/organized crime have destroyed the country with their outrageous demands and you wonder why all our jobs have went overseas. You probably endorsed NAFTA also
Why is he doing this? So he can borrow more money and not pay it back?
What is Christie required to do these days that is harsher than it was in days of past for governors? Oh, he cant take a helicopter anymore? Easy to dish it out. Christie is paternal moralizing gone wild. Walk it the way you talk it, and I would be more tolerant of him.
It has always been the case that the public sector lags behind the private sector. For obvious reasons, large bureaucracies like governments move slowly. Companies that want to be profitable and competitive need to be nimble in order to attract the best talent available, operate efficiently, and to keep down overhead.
20 years ago, the private sector companies were the ones with richer benefit packages, and no one would think of going into a public sector jobs purely for the benefits package. Slowly the public sector added benefits in order to make these jobs more attractive. Unfortunately, when the private companies started to cut back on benefits the public sector was still heading full throttle in the opposite direction. And finally, we have reached the point where the behemoths have started to turn about- none too soon. It’s about time public employees realize that they are living in a 1980’s business era – and the 1980’s are long gone.
torahtotty..you shoot the messenger and yet again exhibit your complete ignorance.
From Wikipedia: “Yellow journalism or the yellow press is a type of journalism that presents little or no legitimate well-researched news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers…Techniques may include exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, or sensationalism.”…
…excactly what the demagogues are doing about public sector benefits.
In case you don’t know what a demagoguery is:
“Demagogy or demagoguery…is a strategy for gaining political power by appealing to the prejudices, emotions, fears, vanities and expectations of the public—typically via impassioned rhetoric and propaganda, and often using nationalist, populist or religious themes.”
“No employer can pay a person 60 years for 30 years of work.”
Not true. The US military has been doing it since time immemorial — in fact you can retire after 20 years and collect a pension for the rest of your life.
Public safety uniformed services need to convince most of their employees to retire by their early 40s at least, less they be stuck with an overaged work force. This is a matter of pikuach nefesh — you don’t want your life to depend on a 61 year old firefighter with heart diseas running into your burning house. Since mandatory retirement is illegal in the US, only exceptionally generous pensions will do the trick.
“No one in private industry would get pensions like government employees. ”
No one in private industry would put up with the low salaries that government employees are stuck with. I recently worked with a government agency on a grant proposal and I was stunned that their salaries were about 60% market rate for professionals. They figure that they can make it up with the good benefits. It is ok to replace the current defined benefit pension plans with defined contribution plans, but the taxpayers are going to take a hit as the salaries are going to have to be dramatically increased. I don’t know where the right wingers got the idea that labor markets don’t apply to government agencies.
“Public worker unions say the pension system is in the red primarily because the state has skipped its annual payment for years.”
This is 100% true. Basically, public employees have been the victim of a theft of Madoff-like proportions, as politicians diverted the pension money to tax cuts and other spending programs. And worse, politicians and commenters here are blaming the victims of the theft. While the theft started long before Christie, he, too, was one of the thieves.
veteran (#7)…Any even superficial research will show that you are wrong…you want it to be that way…so you will it to be. Sorry, but it has been the other way around.
Whether wage and hours reform, the provision of overtime, the hiring of women and minorities (very much including Yidden), recognition of religious observance as an employee right, the provision of sick leave, health benefits…and the list goes on and on…government was out there first. Long before you had the hint of any “right” to be a shomer Shabbos employee, for example, NYC governmemnt gave its employees that right.
Stick to the facts, son.
“20 years ago, the private sector companies were the ones with richer benefit packages, and no one would think of going into a public sector jobs purely for the benefits package.”
Not true on all accounts. The agency I mentioned in my earlier post has done surveys that found that the generous benefits package was one of the biggest reasons people wanted to work there. And public sector benefits are much less generous today than 20 years ago.
When a private-sector employer’s revenue takes a hit, or its expenses run higher than expected, sooner or later the employees take a hit. As far as I can see, that is all that is going on with the change in employee benefits that is being effected for New Jersey employees. Unlike the actions in Wisconsin, I do not see signs of “union busting” or efforts to cut the rights of public employees. The only thing being cut is their pay, which is painful, but the boss thinks it is necessary, and the unions representing the paid help have not convinced him otherwise.