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<B><I><FONT FACE="Century Schoolbook"><P>Letter to the Editor</B></I>:</P>
</FONT><B><FONT FACE="Century Schoolbook" SIZE=4><P>On 'Union Bumps and Grinds'</P>
</B></FONT><FONT FACE="Century Schoolbook"><P>By Jim Marketti</P>
</FONT><B><I><FONT FACE="Century Schoolbook" SIZE=2><P>New Jersey Reporter: </B>October 1998</P>
<P>Volume 28, Number 2, page 4</P>
</I><P>To the Editor:</P>
</FONT><B><FONT FACE="Century Schoolbook"><P>T</B></FONT><FONT FACE="Century Schoolbook" SIZE=2>he trouble with Carl Golden, Governor Whitman's former communications director and consultant to state Republicans, is that he has been a spin merchant for so long that his recent pirouette in the </P>
<P>New Jersey Reporter ("Union Bumps and Grinds,'' May-June issue) bears no resemblance to facts on the ground. Golden, like his former boss, Gov. Whitman, is opposed to seniority rights and staunchly in favor of privatizing public sector work. His arguments, however, are classic political doubletalk.</P>
<P>Golden says we should be opposed to seniority rights because women, minorities and single parents are the first to go in layoffs because of seniority rights. Women, minorities and single parents have been first to go in recent layoffs at the state institutions and in the Department of Motor Vehicles, because Gov. Whitman targeted their jobs for privatization. No one "bumped'' them out except Whitman. The few who were able to keep a job were able to do so because they had seniority rights.</P>
<P>Golden claims that the state workers' union believes that only public employees should be allowed to handle certain responsibilities, regardless of the cost to the taxpayer. Last February, the governor's budget message targeted some 90 of my members for layoff due to privatization initiatives in the Department of Transportation survey and design and real estate appraisal units. A previous study performed by the DOT (Department of Transportation) showed that contracting out real estate appraisal work increased costs by 72 percent. When we asked for the cost studies which would justify these initiatives as saving taxpayers' money, we found that none had yet been made. What we did find out is that the private engineering consulting firms who will benefit from these privatization initiatives contributed $1,253,736 to the Republican Party between 1993 and 1997. We also found that these same firms presently hold $692,282,413 in contracts with the state and apparently want more. We don't believe that taxpayers will see any benefit from this giveaway of state work.</P>
<P>Golden erroneously claims that the CWA (Communication Workers of America) filed a lawsuit against union dissidents and is seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages from them. I doubt Golden could provide a docket number since no such lawsuit was ever filed. I did file internal charges against the instigators of a Republican front group called the Public Employee Association, which tried and failed to oust CWA as the state worker bargaining representative. They were tried by a union panel and expelled from the union. Two of them were fined $2,000 each, which they are not required to pay unless they wish to rejoin the union. This seems a fair enough penalty for union turncoats who wanted to destroy their own organization in order to distract us during last fall's gubernatorial campaign. What would the Republicans do if one of their own county organizations announced its intention to elect Democrats to represent them - pat them on the back and say "good job"?</P>
<P>Finally, Golden claims the union is missing an opportunity to recognize the new realities about Civil Service reform. There is nothing new about the realities which Golden and Whitman have in mind. Employer attempts to deny public workers fair treatment and due process and to turn them into political hacks are as old as the Republic. That's one reason why workers organized unions. If the administration really wanted a positive response from the unions, it would have signed on to Senate Joint Resolution 22, which called for the creation of a Civil Service Task Force to study reform, and was to be made up of any voices besides the governor's, including the unions' and the public's. Until the current administration is willing to deal with the state worker unions in good faith, we will continue to be "boneheaded'' about our members' rights. There is always the chance that the administration's own boneheadedness will wake the sleeping giant of state worker unions, and then we'll be back to the days of showdown over whose reality will prevail.</P>
<P>Jim Marketti</P>
<P>President</P>
<P>CWA Local 1032</P></FONT>
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