N.J. state workers protest as Assembly prepares to vote on pension overhaul bill

In a file photo, public sector union members and supporters rally outside the NJ Statehouse during a day when the NJ Legislature will vote on the pension and health benefit bill in Trenton. (Jerry McCrea/The Star-Ledger)

(file photo)

By Barry Chalofsky

I was a public employee for 35 years! I didn’t dream of working for the state when I was a child, but as a result of various career twists and turns, I ended up being a public employee for much of my working life.

Most of my career as a public employee at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection was exciting and rewarding. I had the opportunity to develop and implement many programs to protect our environment. Like most public employees, I believed that my efforts were meant to help the public and, in my case, to help the planet.

However, things changed after the recession in 2008. Since that time, there appears to be a concerted effort to vilify public employees – teachers; police officers; local, county, state and federal employees. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because the civil service system protects many public employees from being fired, or because there are rarely layoffs in the public sector, or the false perception that public employees are lazy and inefficient. While there have always been people who don’t like public employees, the trend, particularly on the part of certain politicians, as well as the Tea Party, has grown worse. At the federal level, sequestration and the budget crisis are only making the situation more dire. Since agencies cannot hire replacement employees, they are forced to cut services. If the budget is not resolved, the federal employees could be facing massive layoffs.

What I can say is that most public employees, who are also our neighbors and friends, are just as dedicated and efficient as everybody else. They are rarely motivated by money, since salaries are generally lower in the public sector, particularly for upper-level professionals (although benefits are usually better than in the private sector). Most are genuinely motivated by a desire to help – whether it’s protecting the environment, protecting people’s safety, helping our children learn, providing unemployment compensation or other social services, or making sure the trash is picked up.

Yes, there are bad apples — people who take advantage of the system by padding their pensions or by abusing sick leave, for example. Some don’t work hard or take too much time off. Yet I would argue that those same kinds of employees exist in the private sector — from the bottom to the top. While civil service jobs provide workers protection from political patronage, it also sometimes shields the bad worker. But that does not justify castigating all public employees, just as Bernie Madoff’s swindle does not imply that all financial advisors are bad.

The public sector has been hit hard by the recession and is the last sector to recover. This does not help the economy, because public employees are not spending money or buying houses. In addition, while there is a need to maintain efficiency in government, the loss of employees through attrition and retirement, especially at the state level, is causing a tremendous strain on the system and the remaining workforce. Except for the most rabid libertarians, most people agree that we need government and public schools.

There are tasks that cannot be performed by the private sector and there are protections that can only be enforced by a government.

If we agree that we need government, then we should stop demoralizing the people who make up its workforce. Instead, we need to make positive improvements to allow the system to work better.

There needs to be a better mechanism for firing poor workers, as well as incentives to reward good ones. I agree that local government sick leave policies should be made consistent with the state’s policies (which are far less generous). All employees should be treated fairly and have collective bargaining rights, and their salaries should reflect performance and experience. There needs to be better successional planning and training to deal with heavy worker losses due to retirement of the Baby Boomer generation.

At the state level, we need to increase strategic hiring (not allowing the workforce to become bloated), and the governor needs to establish long-term plans and goals for each department. We also need to deal with the federal budget and resolve the nonstop fighting in Congress. We need to reinvigorate the public sector by improving morale and strengthening partnerships between management and labor.

In order for us to fully recover from the Great Recession, we need to stop vilifying public employees and recognize that they perform a vital role in our society. The governor and the administration must commit to building an efficient and productive workforce, not keep blaming the failures of past administrations. If we truly want to regain our economic prosperity, as well as reduce our unemployment rate, we need to work on rebuilding the public sector. New Jersey needs all of its workers to be productive and hopeful if we are to have a chance to be great again.

Barry Chalofsky, P.P., former chief of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection's storm water and ground water programs, is an environmental and land-use planning consultant and an adjunct instructor of environmental planning at Rutgers University. Reach him at bchalofassociates.com.

2 trchristie HINDASH.JPG

CONNECT WITH US: On mobile or desktop:

• Like Times of Trenton on Facebook

• Follow @TimesofTrenton on Twitter