Op-Ed: N.J. retirement benefits are earned, not given

Carla Katz, president of the Communications Workers of America, Local 1034 has an op-ed in the Asbury (New Jersey) Park Press in which she attacks politicians and the press for characterizing public employees' retirement benefits as "entitlements."

This is wrong. Entitlements are government-provided benefits automatically available to eligible citizens because of financial, age or health status, such as welfare, Medicare and Medicaid.

The benefits of New Jersey's public workers are hard won and hard earned — the product of the collective bargaining process. Collective bargaining does not result in entitlements. It results in negotiated contracts that must be honored.

Public workers are not getting rich on the backs of taxpayers. Public workers, who earn an average of $50,000 a year and who can retire after 25 years with an average pension of $27,000, are not the culprits in the state's fiscal crisis. Public workers have traded hundreds of millions of dollars in wage increases, and forgone promotions and higher private-sector wages to help the state and local governments meet their fiscal challenges.

We are not the problem. Bad decision-making and ethical lapses by some of our elected leaders, the failure of the state to pay its fair share into the public employee pension system for years, and rising costs — especially in health care — are the real issues beneath New Jersey's fiscal crisis.

More.