According to a report by Kara Richardson in the Courier News today, all Bridgewater Township employees except for those represented by the police union have agreed to a wage freeze.
In the Bridgewater-Raritan School District, all three major unions (teachers, principals and supervisors) have rebuffed both municipalities and have refused to place a hold on their salary increases (nearly $2.7 million in the next school year), leading to more cutbacks than would otherwise be necessary. Instead, they will pay a small amount towards the cost of their health insurance, 1.5%, and will give back $400,000 in tuition-related reimbursement costs, for a total of about $1.4 million. This is in exchange for lower cutbacks than those originally planned by the Board of Education in one of its draft budget proposals.
The fiscal problems besetting Bridgewater and Raritan are a microcosm of what is happening at the state and national level. Yet the interests of the average resident taxpayer and, yes, even the interests of the children in our schools are taking a back seat to organized labor power.
I have no beef with unions. My dad was a long-time active member and official in a trade union. The growth of organized labor came as a necessary pushback to the low wages, abominable working conditions, and flagrant abuses by management in the manufacturing and mining industries of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
But that was then. Some of today’s labor organizations such as education associations wield far too much influence not only in individual school districts, but also at the state level through their well-funded lobbying efforts.
The well is drying up but, unlike Washington, municipalities and school districts can’t print money to satisfy everybody’s desires.
Note, 4/8/2010: The second paragraph of this blog post has been updated to reflect all concessions made by the BREA with the Bridgewater-Raritan Board of Education.
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