Today, the New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously upheld the Appellate Court’s judgment in the Atlantic and Bridgewater cases.  The Court ruled that the New Jersey Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC), Atlantic County, and Bridgewater overstepped in unilaterally denying workers in Atlantic and Bridgewater their salary increments after Contract expiration. 

For more than 40 years, the established law in New Jersey was that when a contract expired in the public sector, “step increases” or “increments” extended while the two parties negotiated the next contract.  Increments are annual raises that some workers get when they reach annual milestones in service.

The Christie Administration used the Atlantic and Bridgewater cases to deny State Workers their increments – despite a precedent, past practice and custom of continuing increments that has existed since 1975.  

Hetty Rosenstein, NJ State Director of the Communications Workers of America, which represents 35,000 state workers, thousands of whom have gone without the increments since the contract expired, said, “With today’s decision, we hope that the Administration and all New Jersey public employers will restore the increments and follow a law that has existed for more than forty years.  However, if they do not, then today’s decision makes clear we have the legal tools to restore the increments.”