Christie Seeks Ouster of Teachers Union’s Executive Director
February 08, 2012, 4:51 PM ESTBy Terrence Dopp
(Updates with comment from union spokesman in sixth paragraph.)
Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) -- New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who has called leaders of the state’s largest teachers’ union “political thugs,” said the organization’s executive director should be fired for his comments about poor schoolchildren.
“Life’s not always fair,” Vincent Giordano, executive director of the 196,000-member New Jersey Education Association, said during an interview this weekend on the NJTV network, when the host suggested that poor families can’t afford to put their kids in better private schools. The comment is “unacceptable,” Christie told reporters in Westfield today.
“That level of arrogance, that level of pumped-up, rich- man baloney is unacceptable and he should resign,” said Christie, 49, a first-term Republican. “The teachers of New Jersey deserve much better than that.”
Christie has feuded with the association since taking office in January 2010. That April, he urged parents to reject school budgets in districts where teachers refused to accept wage freezes, and accused educators of using children like “drug mules” to carry union messages. In an ABC News interview with Diane Sawyer, he called New Jersey teachers “wonderful public servants” and their union’s leaders “political thugs.”
‘Political Attack’
Barbara Keshishian, president of the NJEA, walked out of a meeting with Christie in April 2010 after she refused to fire a Bergen County union leader who wrote an e-mail joking about the governor’s death.
The governor was unjust to Giordano, Steve Wollmer, a spokesman for the NJEA in Trenton, said in a telephone interview today.
“Could he have chosen better words? I’ll let someone else decide that,” Wollmer said. “This is a political attack and it’s unfair.”
Christie has proposed offering privately funded vouchers to students from poor families, instituting merit pay for teachers and making it easier for administrators to fire educators.
Unassailable Record
Vouchers “will take resources from disadvantaged public schools and only exacerbate the challenges faced by students in those communities,” Giordano, executive director since 2007, said in a statement on the NJEA’s website. The union’s record of support for urban education and poor children “is unimpeachable,” he said.
“While Mr. Giordano acknowledges that his choice of words may be open to misinterpretation, his intent was to make the point that providing vouchers to a select few students is not the way to address the challenges faced by urban school districts.”
Christie has said the NJEA collects more than $100 million a year in dues from its teachers, in part to fund salaries of its leaders and contributions to politicians. Giordano earned $326,000 in 2009, plus about $165,000 in deferred retirement pay and other benefits, according to Wollmer.
The Communications Workers of America, which is New Jersey’s largest union for state-government employees and which has been working without a contract since July 1 amid stalled talks with Christie’s administration, released a statement supporting the NJEA leader.
“The governor seems to be suffering from a case of selective outrage, and -- surprise, surprise -- it is hard- working public employees that have made him mad again,” Bob Master, political director for the CWA, said in the statement.
--Editors: Stacie Servetah, Stephen Merelman
To contact the reporter on this story: Terrence Dopp in Trenton at tdopp@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Tannenbaum at mtannen@bloomberg.net
