Back Off, Trenton!

By the thousands, New Jersey educators personally delivered a message to state lawmakers: Back Off! Their rally on the Capitol steps late last year, protesting changes to state pensions and health benefits, included a whopping 14,000 teachers and other public employees—and almost all of them angry.

“I’m on the steps of one of the richest states in the nation, in one of the best educational systems, and you get no respect!” shouted NEA Executive Board Member Mike Billirakis.

Weeks earlier, a special legislative committee had proposed 41 changes to state benefits, including boosting retirement from age 55 to 62 for new teachers, capping pensions (even though the average is just $29,000), and requiring all public employees to pay more for health care benefits.
“This is a middle-class movement to defend good jobs,” said Jonathan Freitag, a 29-year-old social studies teacher from Mount Holly.

While the committee said its intent is to save money, the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) says the new plan would have another catastrophic effect: One in every four New Jersey teachers would quickly retire to protect their benefits. (Currently, more than 32,000 are eligible—a stunning 23.3 percent.) And, as NJEA points out, the changes don’t make these jobs very attractive.

By January, their arguments had been heard. The pension bill had shrunk from 131 pages to 64. Among the pages that had been removed? The boost in retirement age. Also, apart from the pension issue, a tax-saving idea to consolidate school districts had died. “It just shows the NJEA is still powerful,” state Sen. Bob Smith, the bill’s sponsor, told a local paper.

Photo: NJEA