Port Authority of NY-NJ unions, retirees sue over loss of ‘lifetime’ perk
WHAT HEELS: Two lawyers are suing the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey revoked their lifetime free passes for bridge and tunnel tollways in violation of union contracts that they worked under as police officers before retiring from the agency, The Star-Ledger (Newark) reports:
"When I came on the job in 1971, we were told that you get a certain amount of tickets per year — and they were tickets back then, not E-ZPass — and it was a lifetime benefit," said one of the lawyers, Thomas Westfield, who retired as a Port Authority detective sergeant in 1998. …
Westfield filed his suit Dec. 22 in Superior Court in Morris County on behalf of himself and more than 400 fellow Port Authority retirees who had filed notices threatening to sue the agency. …
Michael Shuhala, who retired as a Port Authority detective in 2003 and is now a lawyer and municipal court judge in Cliffside Park, filed his suit Friday in Bergen County.
"There was a violation of due process of law," said Shuhala, who is not seeking class-action status in his suit. …
Port Authority commissioners voted in November 2010 to revoke free toll privileges in response to a call by Gov. Chris Christie to end toll payer-funded perks. The revocation applied to the commissioners themselves, retirees and off-duty non-union employees hired after Sept. 11, 2001. …
Bobby Egbert, a spokesman for the Port Authority Police Benevolent Association, the department’s biggest union, said the Port Authority’s entire unionized work force had filed grievances over the issue, not merely the police.
The union perk covered tolls for the George Washington Bridge, the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, the Bayonne Bridge, the Goethals Bridge, and the Outerbridge Crossing, plus parking at John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark Liberty Airports.
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