For years, taxpayers in Jersey City, New Jersey, have paid for the salaries of two public school teachers designated by the union to work only on projects for the private union that may or may not benefit the school district.
No more.
The New Jersey Court of Appeals ruled this week a provision in the local teachers’ union contract for the taxpaying funding “is against public policy and unenforceable.”
The Goldwater Institute’s Jon Riches, the director of national litigation, said, “Today is a great day for New Jersey taxpayers, because this puts an end to an egregious form of government cronyism.”
He worked on the case Rozenblit v. Jersey City School District.
“Government resources should be spent for public purposes, not to advance the activities and interests of private individuals and associations. Today’s decision will help ensure that private unions no longer benefit from public dollars,” Riches said.
At the center of the dispute was a provision common in many teachers contracts for “release time.”
The practice pays government employees, using taxpayer money, to work exclusively for unions.
The workers also get tax-paid benefits, and in the Jersey City case, the use of school office and parking facilities.
“While on release time, taxpayer-funded union members engage in political activities, member recruitment, contract negotiations, grievance proceedings against their employer, and other activities that advance the purely private interests of the union,” the institute said.
The case challenged the collective bargaining agreement between the Jersey City School District and the Jersey City Education Association. It required the district to pay the salaries of two full-time teachers who did not spend their time educating Hudson County children.
The cost was estimated at $1.1 million over the life of the agreement.
But the court found the “teachers” were “act[ing] exclusively as labor leaders.”
They were not “teachers who serve the day-to-day educational needs of the students of the district.”
The union argued the salaries were a reasonable expenditure because they would help “in the form of facilitating labor peace.”
But the court ruled that “is not supported by the record,” because union members have been known to go on strike “as a negotiating tactic, in defiance of our state’s long-established common law principle denying all public employees, including school district employees the right to strike.”
The ruling said local governments are subject to state law, and “the legislature did not expressly or implicitly intend to authorize the board to enter into the contractual arrangement.”
