Political Education | American Federation of Teachers New Jersey, AFL-CIO

N.J.’s paid family leave program strengthens families, businesses

May 11, 2012

By Karen S. White and Phyllis Salowe-Kaye
What to get Mom for Mother’s Day?

WALTRAUD GRUBITZSCH/AFP/Getty Images Babies are pictured in this file photo. The authors say paid family leave for new mothers in New Jersey strengthens families and businesses.

How about more time with her family? Isn’t that was she really wants? And how about family time without the demands and pressures of a job to interfere? Wouldn’t it be great if Mom could, say, spend six weeks of paid time off bonding with a new baby?
Here, in New Jersey, she already can.
The state, over the past four years, has created a tremendously successful family leave insurance program that provides paid time off for workers who are dealing with the most major of life’s events — the birth of a child, a sick relative, adoption.
New Jersey is only the second state to provide paid family leave, after California.
The program has been nothing short of a smashing success, providing more than 80,000 workers — four out of five of them women — with partial wage replacement for family leaves that average 5.2 weeks, according to Department of Labor and Workforce development statistics.
The act was the product of years of effort by advocates such as the New Jersey Time to Care coalition, which worked with lawmakers, national partners and union leaders to come up with a family leave insurance program that doesn’t cost employers a dime.

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Non-partisan Election Victories

May 09, 2012

The New Jersey State AFL-CIO in partnership with our central labor councils, building trades councils, and progressive community partners, supported three rank-and-file members as they sought election to their town/city council in yesterday’s non-partisan municipal elections. Each ran with a vision that government should work for the people instead of the powerful, and a commitment to create jobs, oppose privatization, support project labor agreements, and respect collective bargaining rights for all workers. All three are bold, progressive leaders with deep roots in the community and all three won!

Name	Union	Office
Donna Williams	OPEIU 153	Orange Council
Bob Russo	AFT 6025	Montclair Council
Ruby Cotton	IBEW 1158	Paterson Council

The New Jersey State AFL-CIO is proud of all the rank-and-file union members who seek election to public office through the Labor Candidates Program. Since the program’s inception, rank-and-file union members have won 690 elections to public office in New Jersey. The New Jersey State AFL-CIO congratulates these members for their election success.

Working together, the voice of working families and the middle class will continue to be heard in the community and make a difference in the halls of government.

In Unity,

Charles Wowkanech, President
Laurel Brennan, Secretary-Treasurer

Video: Four Years of Family Leave — A Personal Perspective

May 07, 2012

On the fourth anniversary of the enactment of the NJ Family Leave Program, legislators, labor leaders, business owners and every day citizens came together at the New Jersey Statehouse to celebrate the program’s success. The Family Leave Act provides New Jersey workers with paid time off, through a social insurance program, to bond with newborn or newly adopted children or care for a sick loved one.

Does Mitt Romney Have an Education Platform?

April 26, 2012

Beyond breaking the unions, what kind of education policy can we expect from a Romney presidency?

Photo Credit: Christopher Halloran / Shutterstock.com

If you’re looking to understand what Mitt Romney might do to education as president of the United States, a good place to start is with his own words. Back in March, Mitt Romney told Fox News’ Bret Baier that his primary educational goal if elected to the presidency would be to weaken teachers’ unions. “The role I see that ought to remain in the president’s agenda with regards to education,” Romney announced, “is to push back against the federal teachers’ unions.” His promise? To diminish the role of the federal government in education policy, except when it comes to union-busting.

This denunciation of teachers’ unions is nothing new for the Right; it’s a plank that has long figured in Republican campaign rhetoric and policy, starting with Ronald Regan. Though Reagan did engage in moderate rhetoric on unions from time to time on the campaign trail, the same moderation was rarely reflected in policy once he was elected. In a nod to his Hollywood roots, Reagan’s 1980 campaign included a pledge of support for the Screen Actors Guild, the actors’ union. And Cold Warrior that he was, he predictably lauded Polish workers who unionized in defiance of the Soviet Union.

Yet overall, Reagan’s relationship with labor in the United States was overwhelmingly hostile. His dispute with the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Association was perhaps the defining union policy of his presidency. He broke that union apart by firing anyone who failed to comply with his imperative to stop striking. And he certainly opposed America’s two largest teachers’ unions, the National Association of Educators (NEA) and the AFL-CIO-affiliated American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Reagan’s anti-unionism set the stage for his party’s contemporary commitment to union-busting, and that included open opposition to the two teachers’ unions.

Ever since, Republicans have worked to demonize – and weaken – both NEA and AFT. This culminated in 2004, when President George W. Bush’s education secretary Rod Paige absurdly called the NEA a “terrorist organization.” So, it isn’t surprising that Romney has chosen to demonize the two unions in his fight to secure his party’s presidential nomination. But as an educational platform, union-bashing’s pretty thin. The sound bites may play well with the Republican base, but what else do we know about Romney on education? He hasn’t made the issue a central component of his campaign — so where can we look to find out what President Romney’s vision for American education might be?

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Make Tax Fairness the Law of the Land— Urge Your Senator to Support the ‘Buffett Rule’

April 11, 2012

What is the Buffett Rule?
President Obama has proposed the Buffett Rule. It is a simple principle: Millionaires and billionaires shouldn’t pay a smaller share of their income in taxes than middle-class families do.
Why is the Buffett Rule necessary?
It’s a simple point of tax fairness:
␣␣ The average tax rate paid by the wealthiest Americans has fallen to nearly its lowest rate in 50 years.
␣␣ The 400 richest Americans (all making more than $110 million per year) paid only 18 percent of their income in income taxes in 2008. That is a significantly lower rate than that paid by a middle-class head of house- hold making $47,000 per year.
␣␣ Since 1979, the average after-tax income of the very wealthiest Americans has risen almost 300% while middle-class incomes have risen just 40 percent.
␣␣ Many of the richest Americans use tax loopholes to pay even lower taxes, or no taxes at all. In 2009, 22,000 households making more than $1 million annually paid less than 15 percent of their income in taxes, and 1,470 managed to pay no federal income taxes.
The Buffett Rule would ensure that millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share.
Contact Your Senator to Support the Buffett Rule

“We can either settle for an economy where a few people do really well and everyone else struggles to get by, or we can build an economy where hard work pays off again— where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share and everyone plays by the same rules. It’s up to us.”
—Barack Obama

Despite similarities, officials say they did not use model ALEC bills for Christie’s education legislation

April 01, 2012

By Salvador Rizzo/Statehouse Bureau

Ed Murray/The Star-Ledger. Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver, pictured in this February file photo, said after analyzing model ALEC bills and Gov. Christie's legislation that she had "never seen anything like this."

TRENTON — Even the shortest, simplest bills in New Jersey are products of a long, convoluted process.

Lawmakers usually take the first step by drawing up a wish list of what they’d like to see. Inspiration can come from anywhere: an advocacy group, a lobbyist, a news article, a constituent — or from the American Legislative Exchange Council, a national group bankrolled by corporations that writes pro-business model bills.

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Some of Christie’s biggest bills match model legislation from D.C. group called ALEC

April 01, 2012

By Salvador Rizzo/Statehouse Bureau

Star-Ledger file. Gov. Chris Christie's administration denies using ALEC model bills, but some of Christie's biggest legislative proposals this year show numerous similarities to the conservative group's blueprints.

TRENTON — Let’s say you’re a state lawmaker, passionate about charter schools, and you want to turn this passion into laws that create social change. What you need are bills. And you want them fast — ready-made, just add water, written in language that can withstand partisan debate and legal scrutiny.

There is a place that has just what you want.

It’s called the American Legislative Exchange Council, a little-known conservative group headquartered in Washington, D.C., and funded by some of the biggest corporations in the United States — most with a business interest in state legislation.

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Gov. Chris Christie’s higher ed aim claim just political spin

March 04, 2012

By Star-Ledger Editorial Board

Jerry McCrea/The Star Ledger. Gov. Chris Christie

The words were unambiguous. Gov. Chris Christie, in his budget address, promised a big boost in direct aid to public colleges and universities, reversing a long slide in state support.

“Today, because the people of New Jersey stood strong and had faith over the past two years, I am proud to say this budget proposes a nearly 6 percent increase in direct aid to our senior public colleges and universities,” he said.

Legislators in both parties applauded. And college presidents, after enduring years of deep cuts, began dreaming about hiring faculty to ease the chronic overcrowding in their classrooms, or perhaps fixing a few dilapidated laboratories.
How N.J. ranks nationally

1 Percent of ninth-graders graduating from high school
within four years

1 Net high school graduates attending college

2 Magnitude of tuition and fees charged to state residents attending public colleges as full-time undergraduates

47 Public four-year college enrollment per 1,000 residents

49 Public four-year college capacity per 100 public high school graduates

Source: The Report of the Governor’s Task Force on Higher Education, December 2010

But in the week since then, they have come to a remarkable conclusion: The governor’s statement was simply not true.

“Is it true we are receiving an across-the-board increase in operating budget?” asks George Pruit of Thomas Edison State College. “No, it is not. This is not a matter of spin or opinion, this is just a factual statement.”

At Montclair State University, President Susan Cole agreed.

“Notwithstanding the governor’s statement in his budget address, our analysis of the proposed budget, confirmed by discussions with staff in the Office of Management and Budget, is that there is no increase in direct aid for the senior public colleges and universities,” she said.

This was an accounting trick, nothing more. The governor’s budget would increase spending only on college employees’ benefits, which are established in Trenton.

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GOP Candidates Embrace Anti-Labor, Free-Market Fundamentalism

February 28, 2012

John Nichols

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich speaks at First Redeemer Church while on a campaign tour in Cumming, Georgia, February 26, 2012. REUTERS/Tami Chappell

Much is being made, and appropriately so, about the extremism of the Republican presidential field when it comes to reproductive rights and ripping down Thomas Jefferson’s wall of separation between church and state.

It is not just Rick Santorum. Three of the four Republican contenders for the presidency—the sometimes exception is Ron Paul—are running campaigns that position them as theocratic extremists of a far more radical bent than religious-right contenders such as Pat Robertson in 1988 or Gary Bauer in 2000.

But there was an ever more arch fundamentalism on display among the Republican contenders as they battled across Arizona and Michigan in anticipation of today’s critical primaries in those states.

Like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Ohio Governor John Kasich and Maine Governor Paul LePage, they are anti-labor extremists whose opposition to free trade unions goes to extremes not seen since southern segregationists sought to bar unions because of their fear that white workers and people of color were being organized into labor organizations that would threaten “Jim Crow.”

When the candidates debated last Wednesday night in Arizona—a state where Republican Governor Jan Brewer and her legislative allies are advancing a package of anti-union measures—there was no mercy for working Americans or the unions that represent them.

As usual, that went double for Newt Gingrich.

The former Speaker of the House—and noted advocate for overturning child-labor laws—compared unions that represent public-school teachers with rouge nations that attack the United States.

“It’s increasingly clear [education unions] care about protecting bad teachers. If you look at [Los Angeles] Unified, it is almost criminal what we do to the poorest children of America,” he said. “If a foreign nation did this to our children, we would declare it an act of war because they are doing so much damage.”

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Christie proposes increased aid to higher education

February 22, 2012

By Mary Diduch and Jovelle Tamayo / Staff Writers

Gov. Chris Christie outlined his third annual budget address for the next fiscal year — with the intent to make New Jersey have an economic “comeback” with tax cuts and increased funding for certain government entities, like higher education.

The governor’s budget proposal — announced yesterday afternoon at the State House in Trenton — calls for a total of $32.15 billion for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2013. His proposal represents a 3.7 percent increase in government spending from last year.

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