A ll right, wage slaves — at least those of you who have toiled in the mines of the dreaded private sector — I’ve got a question. I remember my last day on nearly every job I ever had, and I remember my final paycheck. I remember getting paid for vacation accumulated that year, unused personal days, hours owed and outstanding expenses. But I don’t remember a single time when my soon-to-be ex-boss said, “Now, let’s figure out howmuch you’ve got coming for the sick and vacation days you didn’t use over the years.”
In every privatesector company I ever worked for, sick days were something the company awarded — or didn’t award — in case one of its employees got sick and had to take some time off. In most of the companies in my experience, employees got between three and five sick days a year, and sometimes more if they provided a note from their doctor. If employees were lucky enough to stay well, that was a blessing — but the days never carried over from year to year, and employers never paid for unused sick and vacation days.
But maybe I was just unlucky to have been hired by all those cheapskates. Maybe other private sector companies pay for unused, accumulated sick and vacation days when the relationship comes to an end, and they’ve escaped my attention.
So let’s have a show of hands. All of you who worked in the private sector and never got paid for those days raise your hands. All right, that looks like almost everybody.
Now, all those of you who left private sector jobs and got a nice, fat final check that included payment for unused sick and vacation days raise your hands. Anybody? Anybody?
That’s what I suspected. There was one guy in the back who raised his hand, but it turned out he only wanted to ask how to find the bathroom. The other two folks with their hands in the air turned out to have been municipal employees from Old Bridge who got enough money from unused sick and vacation day payouts when they retired last year that they bought matching Mustang convertibles.
Fact is, the only people in this state that regularly expect to get paid for accumulated and unused sick and vacation time are public employees — and this disparity is just one of many reasons the complaints of public sector employees sometimes ring hollow among their private sector brethren.
Recently, when Gov. Chris Christie spoke at a town hall meeting in Spotswood, he said therewas a real need in New Jersey to get rid of enormous, unused sick and vacation day payouts to retiring public employees. He went so far as calling the current system a “scam,” and noted that because of that, the bonus payouts will cost every household taxpayer in New Brunswick $1,330. In Edison it’s $352 per household, and in Old Bridge, it’s $348. That’s every household. He pointed to Parsippany, where four police officers retired recently, and the township had to write them checks that totaled over $900,000. Cumulatively, he said, the sick and vacation day liability for public workers in New Jersey is over $825 million.
His solution is to emulate the private sector, and stop paying for accumulated sick and vacation days altogether going forward. To him, it just makes sense — and it makes sense to a lot of us in the majority who earn our livings in the private sector as well.
I understand that many of these payouts are the result of contract negotiations between local officials and their workers. And, as state Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-Middlesex) noted, they were often included in collective bargaining agreements in lieu of higher salary increases. We probably can’t refuse to pay what has previously been agreed to without serious legal implications, even if we can’t afford the tab — but enough is enough.
Some communities, like Spotswood, have successfully capped sick and vacation payouts over the years, but efforts to do it at the state level have sputtered. Christie vetoed a measure that would have capped the payouts at $15,000, and has vowed to fight a revamped proposal by state Democrats of a $7,500 cap. “I am not compromising on this one,” he said. “Zero means zero.”
Chris Christie is right. It simply makes sense to most of us that public employees — whose salaries we pay with our taxes — should not get a better deal with regard to raises, contributions, and end-of-the-line payouts than people in the private sector.
Hold the line, Governor. Zero Means Zero will mean a lot more to average taxpayers than that 9-9-9 business that I could never understand.
Time for my predictions for 2012, which will be somewhat abbreviated because my Magic 8 Ball sprung a leak, and is oozing some sort of goo that might be toxic.
Barack Obama will win his second term easily, in spite of the fact that a new Republican candidate will emerge from the hinterlands of Flyover Country at the last minute to captivate conservative hearts, minds and checkbooks. He will start strong, but will falter due to investigative reports by Rachel Maddow that the reason he looks sort of strange — and orange — is that he’s a orangutan who escaped from the University of Oklahoma’s primate research facility in Norman. His status as a monkey will not be the sticking point, however. He will be disqualified after conclusive evidence surfaces that he was born in Borneo, and is not anAmerican citizen. His birth certificate will be seen to have been doctored with liberal amounts of Wite-Out.
On April 14, there will be a sit-in at the East Brunswick post office by disgruntled customers who stand in line for hours to mail their income tax returns, but can’t accomplish their missions because the two postal employees manning the six available stations get in an argument over who’ll get the first break and punch each other senseless. The Automated Postal Center will be out of commission, again. The National Guard will be called in to restore order.
That’s all, folks. The Magic Ball is dry, but Happy New Year!
Gregory Bean is the former executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers. You can reach him at [email protected].