Furloughs Coming For NJ State Workers: Gov. Phil Murphy

NEW JERSEY - The Communication Workers of American and the administration of Gov. Phil Murphy have agreed to a plan that they say will save thousands of state workers' jobs, Murphy said Tuesday.

The catch is that those 70,000 working families represented by the CWA will have to forgo raises and agree to furloughs. A plan that Murphy said both sides agreed upon.

"This agreement will provide substantial cost savings to the state and prevent employee layoffs," Murphy said at his daily COVID-19 briefing. "We have worked hard with CWA to structure these furloughs to maximize state savings while minimizing the financial impact on our employees. We cannot hide the impact this public health emergency is having on our state finances. I thank CWA's leaders and employees for coming to the table in partnership to address this reality while ensuring that as many New Jerseyans as possible remain gainfully employed."

According to their website, the Communications Workers of America (AFL-CIO) represents more than 70,000 working families in New Jersey, including more than 40,000 state workers, 15,000 county and municipal workers, and thousands of workers in the telecommunications and direct care industries.

"I've always believed that bringing people to the table and negotiating in good faith leads to the best outcomes and in this instance it is the best outcome for the state, our workers and our taxpayers," Murphy said.

During the conference Murphy deferred repeated requests for more clarification, noting that the agreement is subject to employee ratification. But he did answer criticism that this will not address the institutional debt in the Garden State.

"I don't want people to cross wires between why we got elected and what we were working on before COVID-19 which was to chop through the structural deficits we inherited," Murphy said, commenting that pension, outstanding indebtedness, healthcare costs that were getting out of control and at the same time hurting the individual employee. "We have been making enormously good progress on all of those fronts until this crisis, and we intend to continue that."

Last month, Treasurer Elizabeth Maher Muoio painted a stark picture of the fiscal challenges the Garden State faces in both the near and the long term as impact of COVID-19 on the state coffers is starting to be felt.

"Our economic analysts, like analysts around the country, have been working around the clock to try to gauge the short and long term impact of this crisis," she said at the time. "Based on a number of economic assumptions, we are now a New Jersey potentially facing a shortfall of nearly $10 billion dollars through the end of fiscal year 2021. That is a jaw-dropping figure."

Murphy underscored that the to borrow and the need the for federal cash assistance is to keep educators, EMS, police, fire and healthcare workers employed.

"Do we have big structural deficits, yes we do. We had them before COVID-19, we were on a journey we have a plan we will continue, God willing, on that plan," he said. "We need the ability to borrow, and we need the federal direct cash assistance. And those aren't either/or those are and/both. And if we get that we'll have, in my opinion, the latitude to break through the worst of this."

The employee ratification of CWA agreement is expected later this week.

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