New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is pushing for the state Legislature to force state employees to pay 30% of their health care costs, without going through the collective bargaining process. The unions say that legislating health care benefits will remove their ability to bargain them in the future. The Governor says that the unions have used the same tactic in the past to get increase, but the unions say that was only for pension increases, which cannot be negotiated. The Governor provided documentation of times when the unions received pension increases from the Legislature, but his only examples for health care were a law that applied to everyone and a health care study. Contract negotiations begin today.
See "N.J. Gov. Christie, public workers union fight over changes in employee health benefits", Ginger Gibson, The Star-Ledger, March 10, 2011