Labor News | American Federation of Teachers New Jersey, AFL-CIO

Pain in the Public Sector

December 05, 2011

Buried in the relatively positive numbers contained in the November jobs report was some very bad news for those who work in the public sector. There were 20,000 government workers laid off last month, by far the largest drop for any sector of the economy, mostly from states, counties and cities.

That continues a troubling trend that’s been building for years, one that has had a particularly harsh effect on black workers. While the private sector has been adding jobs since the end of 2009, more than half a million government positions have been lost since the recession.

In most cases, states and cities had to lay off workers because of declining tax revenues, or reduced federal aid because of Washington’s inexplicable decision to focus more on the deficit in the near term than on jobs.

Those layoffs mean a lower quality of life when there are fewer teachers, pothole repair crews and nurses.

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RVCC, Watchung teachers unions struggle with contract negotiations

November 30, 2011

Contracts at RVCC, Warren remain unsettled

American Federation of Teachers Local 2375 President Maria DeFilippis speaks. / MARY IUVONE/FOR NJ PRESS MEDIA

BRANCHBURG— A labor dispute at a sleepy Central Jersey community college managed to gain the attention of some prominent Democratic politicians who attended a faculty and student rally Tuesday evening.

Assemblyman Jason O’Donnell, a Democrat from Hudson County representing the 31st District, spoke at the Raritan Valley Community College rally in solidarity with the faculty.

Also at the rally was Marie Corfield, an art teacher in the Flemington-Raritan district best known for her exchange with Gov. Chris Christie at his town halls last year in Raritan Township.

American Federation of Teachers Local 2375 President Maria DeFilippis said the rally maked the 152nd day the faculty has been working without a contract. Nearly 50 people attended the event inside the campus center.

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Life after the uprising: O’Donnell joins community college teachers’ battle for contract

November 30, 2011

By Max Pizarro

Asm. Jason O'Donnell

RARITAN – On the losing end of an intra-party leadership battle, Assemblyman Jason O’Donnell (D-31), Bayonne, proved there’s life after the rebellion tonight as he threw in with stymied community college teachers.

“If you want to pick on cops and firefighters, okay, I get it,” the career Bayonne firefighter told a basement crowd at Raritan Valley Community College where the teachers don’t have a contract.

“But you want to go after teachers? Are you kidding me?”

Stung by George Norcross-allied Democrats when he, state Assembly Majority Leader Joe Cryan (D-20), Union, and others tried to win leadership in the lower house more sympathetic to public sector unions, O’Donnell said he plans to take the megaphone of his office into the streets.

“Wherever labor needs me,” he told PolitickerNJ.com.

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March for Jobs and Economic Fairness

November 22, 2011

There are 14 million unemployed in America, while the richest 1% has tripled its wealth over the past 30 years.
March for Jobs and Economic Fairness
December 1st, 4pm – Herald Sq to Union Sq

More than 200 arrested as Occupy Wall Street protests sweep through NYC streets

November 18, 2011

Stuart Leonard, an English instructor at Kean University who has been joining the protesters several times a week, said he was encouraged by Thursday’s turnout. But the Occupy Wall Street movement must do something new to stay relevant, he said.

“It needs to take a next step,” said Leonard, of Garwood.

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A Win for Workers, and for Us All

November 14, 2011

By Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers

Randi Weingarten talking to Ohio families about the importance of collective bargaining rights.

“As Ohio goes, so goes the nation” has taken on new meaning after this week’s election. The people of Ohio used their citizen veto decisively to repeal legislation that would have stripped police officers, teachers, firefighters and other public workers of their right to bargain collectively.

It is the first time in the nation’s history that collective bargaining rights have been upheld on a statewide ballot. And it is a clear sign that Americans understand we can’t rebuild the economy without rebuilding the middle class.

The opposition to the legislation’s partisan overreach went well beyond public employees and union members. More people voted to repeal Senate Bill 5 in November 2011 than voted to elect John Kasich governor a year earlier. That message should not be lost on the legislators who voted to pass it.

Election results from Maine to Mississippi and from Ohio to Arizona demonstrated that voters were fed up with politicians who thought they could exploit a tough economy to advance extremist agendas. The public is crying out for leaders to help get the economy back on track for all Americans.

In Ohio, voters saw the public services that public workers provide as being essential to their communities—whether it was the cop on the beat or the teacher in the classroom. And, implicit in that is the acknowledgment that employees having a voice in their work is a way to ensure and improve the quality of vital public services.

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Occupy Wall Street on the March hosted by URA

November 12, 2011

Occupy Wall Street on the march

We are the 99 percent

Assembly

New Jersey 2011: Post-Election Review

November 10, 2011

Pre-election polls showed a virtual dead heat in both the 2nd and 38th Districts. Whelan and Sen. Robert Gordon (D-38) both won by larger-than-expected margins after their campaigns did a better job of pulling out their vote.

“Money matters, but nothing beats boots on the ground,” said Charles Wowkanech, President of the New Jersey State AFL-CIO, adding the labor movement had 11,000 volunteers knocking on 140,000 doors on Tuesday.

“In a race in which you know there’s going to be a small turnout, it’s the ground game that matters — it’s the culmination of weeks of work making phone calls, knocking on doors, and turning out your vote.”

Gordon said “we couldn’t have won” without the small army of police, firefighters, teachers, building trades workers and environmental activists that made up his field operation. The strong effort not only helped Gordon and his Assembly running mates, but also enabled Democrats to elect two Bergen freeholders, the county clerk, the county surrogate and numerous mayors and council members, ending a two-year Republican tide in the county, said Senator Paul Sarlo (D-36).

Large-scale GOTV operations were also critical in helping the Democrats hold both Assembly seats in the 7th, as well as the larger-than-expected victory margins of Sen. Linda Greenstein and her running mates in the 14th District in Mercer and Middlesex counties, said state Democratic chairman and Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-19).

Labor’s role was a question mark after Democratic leaders convinced enough members from South Jersey and Essex County to join with Christie’s Republicans to pass a bill that not only increased pension and health benefit contributions for public employees, but also stripped them of the right to bargain over healthcare issues for four years.

While some unions vowed retribution last summer, “the public and private sector unions really came together in the final weeks because they understood the need to maintain a Democratic majority in order to prevent Gov. Christie from enacting an anti-union, anti-working family agenda,” Wowkanech said.

That didn’t mean the controversy over the bill didn’t have an impact, as the votes in the 1st District made clear. Assemblyman Nelson Albano (D-1), a union shop steward who was the only South Jersey Democrat to defy Norcross by voting against the pension and health benefits bill, outpolled Sen. Jeff Van Drew (D-1), usually the ticket’s leading vote-getter. Albano won his Assembly seat comfortably, piling up a 3,543-vote margin over his closest opponent, while his running mate, Assemblyman Matt Milam (D-1) squeaked by with just 974 votes in the closest election in the state.

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Young Workers Forum- Nov. 5, NYC

October 24, 2011

Young Workers and Organizers: Saturday, November 5, 10 am to 3 pm. CUNY, 25 W. 43rd St., 18th floor. NY, NY 10036

Intellectual Roots of Wall St. Protest Lie in Academe

October 17, 2011

Movement’s principles arise from scholarship on anarchy

Yunghi Kim for The Chronicle. Occupy Wall Street protesters have been demonstrating in Zuccotti Park since mid-September. The movement has an academic heritage that spans political science, economics, and literature, but its organizing principles owe a debt to an ethnography of Madagascar.

By Dan Berrett

Academics have become frequent visitors to Zuccotti Park, the 33,000-square-foot pedestrian plaza in the heart of New York City’s financial district that is now the site of a nearly monthlong protest, Occupy Wall Street.

Famous scholars like Cornel West, Slavoj Zizek, and Frances Fox Piven have spoken to the crowd, with their remarks dispersed, word-for-word, from one cluster of people to the next through a “human megaphone.” Many others, such as Lawrence Lessig, have lent their support from farther away, as the demonstrations have spread to cities and college campuses nationwide.

The movement has repeatedly been described as too diffuse and decentralized to accomplish real change, and some observers have seen the appearances by academic luminaries as an attempt to lend the protest intellectual heft and direction. Certainly, its intellectual underpinnings and signature method of operating are easier to identify than its goals.

Economists whose recent works have decried income inequality have informed the movement’s critiques of capitalism. Critical theorists like Michael Hardt, professor of literature at Duke University, and Antonio Negri, former professor of political science at the University of Padua, have anticipated some of the central issues raised by the protests. Most recently, they linked the actions in New York and other American cities to previous demonstrations in Spain, Cairo’s Tahrir Square, and in Athens, among other places.

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