Holding One Meeting in Trenton at 3 pm is Affront to Good Government & a Slap in the Face to Working Families.
(TRENTON, NJ) – Next Wednesday, April 10th, the New Jersey Civil Service Commission (CSC) will hold a single public hearing on a rule proposal eliminating Civil Service as we know it. The proposal will eliminate most competitive promotions and open the door to a flood of patronage, favoritism and discrimination. It will completely eliminate veterans’ preference in hiring and promotions.
Civil Rights organizations, advocates for the disabled, veterans’ groups, legislative leaders, unions and concerned citizens will all attend the hearing - to be held at 3 p.m. in a small room at the Civil Service Commission in Trenton. However, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) is calling on the CSC to hold additional public hearings in other parts of the state, so working families are able to have their voices heard via a true, public vetting process before the Christie Administration adopts the most radical changes to Civil Service in decades.
“The Civil Service Commission scheduled a single, rubber-stamp public hearing as if it’s one of the Governor’s Town Hall meetings – holding it in the middle of the week during working hours, making it virtually impossible for those affected or who may be opposed to have their voices heard,” said Hetty Rosenstein, CWA NJ State Director. “They’ll simply put up a stenographer to record testimony and then jam through whatever they wanted to do in the first place - public good be damned. Over the past thirty years, I’ve been through dozens of rule change hearings, yet this is the first time I can recall that Civil Service did not accommodate a request for more public hearings.”
Even though the New Jersey Constitution requires public jobs be awarded through a competitive testing process wherever possible, the CSC is seeking to bypass Constitutional requirements by "broad banding" titles. They want to place dozens and possibly hundreds of titles into “job bands” where management would be allowed to unilaterally “advance” favored workers through the band instead of requiring competitive examination. This would eliminate transparent lists of promotion-eligible workers, public postings of who was awarded the position. It would also eliminate the preference that veterans and disabled veterans not be bypassed promotion if they meet eligibility requirements and score high enough on the list.
“Every single advancement will be subject to political pressure,” added Rosenstein, “Disabled workers, LGBT workers, women, workers of color, older workers, and veterans will all have to overcome prejudice every step of the way.”
Not only does the new regulation allow discriminatory advancement, it also eliminates the one neutral avenue to appeal. Under the current system, if discrimination is alleged as the reason for not receiving a promotion, the worker can go before a neutral judge to present proof of discrimination at the Office of Administrative Law. That course of action is completely eliminated under the proposal.
The proposed rule change could affect hundreds of thousands of workers, as well as expose every single New Jerseyan to higher taxes due to corruption, cronyism and special favors. CSC should hold a public process that is accessible to those taxpayers and workers who would be directly affected by any rule changes. They all deserve a chance to have their voices heard in a meaningful way.
As such, CWA has launched a petition for supporters to call on the CSC to additional public hearings locations, dates and times. The petition can be viewed – and signed - at www.cwanj.org.
The Communications Workers of America (AFL-CIO) represents both private sector and public workers. CWA represents more than 70,000 working families in New Jersey, including over 40,000 state workers, 15,000 county and municipal workers, and thousands of workers in the telecommunications, airlines, health care and direct care industries. It represents thousands of public workers both in Civil Service jurisdictions and those that have not adopted Civil Service.
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