Sunday - January 27, 2013

Right To Work? Not In NJ

[discussing teh Hurricane Sandy disaster repair efforts in the northeast, and lack thereof] CALLER: My question being, I heard a report that in New Jersey they passed a law that said any construction bid from a company that was nonunion would not even be considered. And my question is, how does that correlate with the proclamation of Obama’s that everybody will be getting a fair shot?

RUSH: It doesn’t, and I think for the most part you’re right. I have a story here from NJ.com back on the 14th of January. “Taking up its first substantial piece of legislation relating to Hurricane Sandy, the [New Jersey] state Senate today passed a bill that would let governments call for all union workers when hiring contractors to rebuild key pieces of infrastructure,” because there was this restriction. You can only be a member of a union. The relief workers had to be unionized or they couldn’t work.

CALLER: Doesn’t compute.

RUSH: Have you ever heard of the Jones Act and the BP oil spill?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: The Obama administration would not permit international relief workers to help because they were not union.

CALLER: That’s right.

RUSH: Politics comes first!

CALLER: Absolutely.

RUSH: Politics comes first.

He is not kidding:

The bill (S2425), which passed along party lines 23[D] to 13[R], expands the use of project labor agreements, which are meant to settle workplace labor disputes in advance.

New Jersey has had a project labor agreement law on the books since 2002, but highways, bridges, pumping stations and water and sewage treatment plants were exempted. With extensive rebuilding needed on those structures along the shore, this bill includes them.

Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester), who authored the legislation and fast tracked it, said the agreements are key to making sure work goes to New Jersey workers. He noted a Sunday Star-Ledger story about how the Christie administration gave a no-bid contract worth up to $100 million to AshBritt, an out-of-state debris hauling firm.

“AshBritt is coming into the state of New Jersey with many people from Missisippi and Florida and North Carolina,” he said. “AshBritt is not good for New Jersey. It brings people to New Jersey. We have plenty of people out of work and we should put them to work first.”

But Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean, Jr (R-Union) said a Corzine administration study showed project labor agreements increase the costs of projects from 18 to 24 percent, which could decrease the number of completed projects.

“So in these days post-Sandy, we’ve been called back to debate only one bill,” he said. “This is one bill that has the potential to change that recovery estimate, if the cost estimates are right, form 10 completed project to 9 completed projects.”

Kean offered an amendment to the bill that would apply pay-to-play restrictions to unions that get project labor agreements. It was quickly shot down by Democrats.

For those who live in states with less rampant corruption than NJ (everywhere other that NY and IL I think), Pay To Play is NJ’s legalized bribery law. You want a government contract? Feed the kitty. Feed it good.

Oh, and in typically sneaky bureaucrat fashion, the bill itself never uses the word “union”. No, they just demand that all workers are drawn from “an organization which represents, for purposes of collective bargaining, employees involved in the performance of public works contracts”. In other words, from the union hall, and paid the union rate.

That ought to send them damn Right To Work out-of-stater scabs the hell home. Pffffug them, thinking they’re up here to “help”. yeah, “help” themselves to OUR federal relief money. Dat money is fo duh yoon-yun, so fuggedabowdit. Sheesh.

***********

The Senate bill has now moved to the Assembly as bill A3679, where it passed the solidly Democrat Labor Committee with an 8-3 vote Thursday. So it will now move Forward! to the general Assembly (48 D, 32 R).

Posted by Drew458     on 01/27/2013 at 10:38 AM   
Filed Under: • Government • Unions-Labor •  
• Comments (4) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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