Legislators will furlough, Union will fight, Corzine looks at rebates

by: Jason Springer

Thu Feb 19, 2009 at 09:27:16 PM EST

Senate President Richard J. Codey and Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts Jr. today agreed to honor Gov. Jon S. Corzine's call for a two-day furlough of employee salaries in the legislative branch to close the mounting gap in the state FY 2009 budget.

Under Corzine's plan, employees would be required to take one furlough day in May and one in June to help close the gap in the current budget.

Codey (D-Essex) and Roberts (D-Camden) said they will furlough the Senate and Assembly majority and minority offices in accordance with Corzine's plan.

They said they will also direct the Office of Legislative Services to do the same, while also directing the clerks of each legislative house to research how Senate and Assembly members can furlough two-days of pay and apply the two-day furlough to their district offices.

Hetty Rosenstein, New Jersey state director for the Communications Workers of America, said the CWA will file an unfair labor practice complaint with the state's Public Employment Relations Commission.

"We think that in fact in our contract we have negotiated an annual wage. We think they need to respect that contract, and the furlough is in fact a violation of that," Rosenstein said. "They're going to try to pretend it's a layoff. Our attorney doesn't think you can gimmick your way out of it."

The governor has repeatedly said all options, including rebates, are on the chopping block as he tries to balance New Jersey's finances, though he has so far declined to discuss rebates specifically. But behind the scenes, discussions on how to trim the rebates are occurring daily, the sources said, because there are very few budget areas left to cut that could save hundreds of millions of dollars.