Toll takers, supporters say privatization will result in layoffs, pay cuts for loyal workers who already agreed to costly concessions in last contract
A New Jersey Turnpike toll plaza. New Jersey plans to take bids in December for private operators to take over highway-toll collectionWOODBRIDGE — Carmen DeIorio has a $1,650 mortgage on his three-bedroom home in Point Pleasant and a 16-year-old son looking at colleges where tuition starts at $35,000 a year. So with an annual salary of $65,000, the 52-year-old toll taker said money is already tight.
"My kid’s got two years of high school left and I’m trying to save some money for that, and it puts me in a real financial bind," said DeIorio, who works the 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift at Interchange 8A, in Jamesburg, on the New Jersey Turnpike.
So when he heard about the Turnpike Authority’s plan to privatize his and other jobs on the turnpike and the Garden State Parkway, DeIorio joined more than 100 union brethren to protest the proposal during the agency’s board meeting today in Woodbridge.
Transportation Commissioner James Simpson, who chairs the turnpike board, has raised the possibility of privatization as a way to cut costs. But toll takers and their supporters say privatization will result in layoffs and pay cuts for loyal workers who already agreed costly concessions under their last contract four years ago.
"We’re being asked to go to the slaughterhouse," said Franceline Ehret, president of Local 194 of the International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers, which represents most of the agency’s 800 toll takers.
"We urge you to hold off on putting out this RFP," she said, referring to a request for proposals drafted by the turnpike agency seeking a deal with private companies to take over toll-taking operations.
Simpson said the RFP would go out in January, with any privatization deal at least a year away.
The spectre of privatization looms as toll takers and other employees head into negotiations for new contract before their current deal expires June 30. Simpson said privatizing toll takers could be avoided if the agency wins sufficient concessions from employees, though he denied the threat of privatization was being used as leverage.
"One might assume that, but that’s not the intent," Simpson told reporters after the meeting.
Under privatization, turnpike officials said, the agency would set minimum staffing levels at toll plazas, while the company would be free to set overall employment levels, wages and benefits. Turnpike officials said privatization would affect toll takers only, including 309 full-timers and 385 part-timers on the turnpike and 168 full-timers and 17 part-timers on the parkway.
But Frank Forst, an advisor to the Local 194 president, said that he had seen the RFP, and that it called for privatization of turnpike maintenance workers. "I saw it with my own eyes," he said.
Tom Feeney, a spokesman for the authority, acknowledged union leaders were shown a draft document containing a reference to maintenance workers.
But, he said, it was only in the context of parkway toll takers’ right to bump maintenance workers with less seniority in the even the toll taker preferred not to work for the company privatizing toll operations.
Previous coverage:
• N.J. Turnpike Authority to sell $1.5B in Build America Bonds
• N.J. website details finances of state independent authorities
• IRS audits $1.375B in bonds issued by N.J. Turnpike Authority
• Turnpike Authority ends free employee E-ZPasses, sick day carryovers
• N.J. plans to take bids to privatize Turnpike toll collection
• N.J. Turnpike, Garden State Parkway employees might lose free E-ZPass for travel to work