‘Hey, Beck, what the heck,” chanted demonstrators outside the District 12 legislator’s office on Monmouth Street in Red Bank.
ERIC SUCAR staff About 50 Monmouth County teachers and members of the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) hold a demonstration outside of state Sen. Jennifer Beck’s office to protest her support of three Senate bills that they say unfairly target the pensions of teachers and school employees. NJEA members held mass demonstrations at the offices of 30 senators who either support the pension legislation or have yet to take a position on it. The demonstrators carried signs that read, “Don’t starve the lunch ladies,” “Don’t throw the drivers under the bus” and “Target abuse not people who work.”
About 50 New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) members gathered outside state Sen. Jennifer Beck’s (R-12th District) office on June 20 to protest her support of three Senate bills that they say unfairly target the pensions of teachers and school employees.
“We are demonstrating against proposed legislation that would affect our pensions,” said Sara Marino of the Monmouth County Education Association (MCEA).
Demonstrators carry signs that read “Don’t starve the lunch ladies,” “Don’t throw the drivers under the bus” and “Target abuse not people who work” outside the offices of state Sen. Jennifer Beck in Red Bank on June 20. About 50 teachers and members of the New Jersey Education Association protested Beck’s support of three Senate bills that address pensions for public employees. The demonstrators outside Beck’s office were not alone in their protests.
More than 100 demonstrators gathered outside the Middletown offices of Sen. Joseph M. Kyrillos Jr. (R-13th District) and about 300 gathered outside Sen. Sean T. Kean’s (R-11th District) offices in Wall, according to NJEA Uniserve Representative Brian Furry.
Including the demonstrations in Monmouth County, NJEA members conducted mass demonstrations at the offices of 30 senators who either support the pension legislation or have yet to take a position on it, according to a NJEA press release.
“The Senate bills will take away pensions from people at the lowest end [of the spectrum],” said MCEA President Harry Camwell.
He said the people that would be most affected by the proposed legislation are the education support professionals like bus drivers, cafeteria workers and custodians.
“We have an excellent working relationship with the NJEA and we have the highest respect for teachers and public employees. These bills are aimed at the abusers of the pension system, not the average government or state employee,” said 12th Legislative District spokesman Tom Fitzsimmons.
Beck is a co-sponsor of three of the bills, S1962, S1964 and S1969, which the NJEA is protesting, according to Fitzsimmons.
“S1962 raises the bar for people who are eligible being in the pension system from an income $1,500 to $5,000 a year,” said Fitzsimmons.
He continued, “S1964 changes the pension calculate from the average of the last three years salary to the average of the last five years of salary. S1969 prohibits tacking, or having a bunch of part-time jobs. If you have more than one job that you are eligible for a public pension, you have to declare which job is the basis for calculating your pension.”
According to the NJEA Web site, S1962 requires “that school employees work a minimumof 30 hours per week to qualify for participation in the Public Employees Retirement Fund (PERS) or the Teachers’ Pension and Annuity Fund (TPAF);” S1964 is a change in the pension formula “for future employees to use the average of an employee’s five highest years of earnings when calculating individual pensions;” and S1969 requires “that members who hold multiple positions choose only one job for pension purposes.”
Although the group is protesting the bills, Camwell said they are not against pension reform altogether.
“We want to see pension reform for those abusing the system,” he said. “The politicians, they don’t want to deal with the abuse.”
Furry said the goal of the protests was to stop the Legislature from moving forward with the Senate bills.
“These people work their whole careers and they deserve a pension. Their salaries aren’t the cause of the strain on the pension system,” he said, adding, “[The NJEA] made a deal with the Legislature last year with pensions, working in reforms. Right now they seem to be flying flat in the face of everything that was agreed to.”
Those reforms include a 10 percent increase in personal contributions to the pension system, a limit on early retirement and a cap on the maximum pension that an individual can receive, according to an NJEA press release.
“We stand ready to work with the Legislature to root out the real causes of pension abuse and corruption that genuinely harm the state’s finances,” said NJEA President Joyce Powell in the release. “But we will not tolerate – not now, not ever – any attempt to scapegoat teachers, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, crossing guards and other school employees for sins they have never committed.”
She added, “These bills are not pension ‘reform.’ They are pension reduction.”
The protestors continued chanting “Target abuse not people who work” and “We will remember in November” outside the senator’s office in the late afternoon heat from 3 to 4:30 p.m.
“I think it’s unfair and unjust,” said Freehold Regional Education Association PresidentDebbieGates. “This is an agreement we already made. We’d be more than happy to sit down and discuss this if the politicians would give back.”
She added, “These are people [the politicians] that are collecting three or four pensions and they are going after little lunch ladies.”
According to Fitzsimmons, neither Beck nor District 12 Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlonwere in the office during the demonstration.