Sign Up For Our Newsletter

New Jersey union power

A good look at starving teachers in the Garden State:

Cops and teachers who, a generation ago, were underpaid and overworked are now enjoying compensation and working conditions that are the envy of the private sector. Experienced patrolmen in North Jersey routinely make $100,000 or more, and public-school teachers can top out at more than $90,000 and typically pay nothing for health insurance throughout their careers.

Their unions achieved their status through hard work, savvy use of public relations, lots of cash pumped into legislative and gubernatorial campaigns and a dose of good old-fashioned union solidarity. The two labor groups now wield the clout to drive law-enforcement and education policy — and, in part, determine tax rates — throughout North Jersey.

The political influence of New Jersey’s nearly 500,000 government workers is partly a result of their sheer numbers. Census records show that public employees constitute just over 10 percent of workers in the four counties of northeast New Jersey.

But a Record poll, conducted last month, found that those numbers understated their potential voting strength. Thirty-eight percent of randomly chosen respondents said they live in a household where significant income is derived from public employment.

Government workers are more likely to vote than private-sector workers, according to the poll, by a margin of 66 percent to 48 percent. And their views differ significantly from the general population on issues such as privatization of government services and merit pay.

The NJEA (New Jersey Education Association) has been called the most powerful union in the state, and it’s not difficult to see why. The union, which represents teachers and school support staff in all but five New Jersey districts, says that 93 percent of its nearly 200,000 members cast ballots in the 2004 election, compared with 73 percent of New Jersey’s registered voters in general. More than 1,100 teachers answered their union’s call and volunteered at least three hours to a legislative campaign between the Saturday before the election and Election Day 2005.

"The teachers union makes the Teamsters look like pussycats," said Alan R. Geisenheimer, one-time president of the Bergen County School Boards Legislative Committee. "The question I would ask, is there any legislation the NJEA has asked for that they haven’t gotten? I don’t know of any."

NJEA leaders agree they have uncommon access to the corridors of power. Unlike some other public employee unions, whose members are concentrated around Trenton, where they work, "every community has teachers in it," said Joseph R. Marbach, chairman of the Seton Hall political science department. "They can be the difference in any local election. They could change what party controls the Legislature."

NJEA executive director Robert Bonazzi said the union’s sway is based on its integrity.

"We can be trusted," Bonazzi said. "We have interests and we pursue them in the most ethical way we possibly can, so people in the Legislature feel good about the NJEA."

No doubt the union supports many worthwhile programs: smaller class sizes, family involvement in education and courses to upgrade the skills of its members.

But it also doesn’t hurt that the NJEA is among the top political action committees contributing to legislative and gubernatorial races — $1.5 million over the past three years, according to state records. The state PBA kicked in $218,495 over the same period.

"To some of my colleagues in the Senate, the teachers union is tangible and the general pub- lic is not," said Sen. Gerald Cardinale, R-Demarest. "The teachers union is a monolithic force; the public is not."

As our litigation makes its way through the courts, this will be, as it always has been, one of our single biggest obstacles.