Paid Family Leave Final Vote on Monday
Yesterday afternoon, the Assembly Labor Committee voted 6-2-1 in favor of passing Paid Family Leave. The bill still has another committee hearing in the Assembly, but will face its final vote in the Senate on Monday. Click here for this week's CIANJ Business Beat highlighting the proposed mandate, and here for the PolitickerNJ story on the closeness of Monday's vote.
As you know, the bill would allow employees to take up to six weeks off to care for a newborn or newly adopted child or a sick family member. Unlike FMLA, there would be no exemption for small businesses and eligibility would be based on wages earned per week, not hours worked. Regular blog readers also know that New Jersey is one of only six states with paid maternity leave. The overwhelming majority of family leave applications would be to add six weeks of paid family leave to the six weeks of paid maternity leave already in place.
During the committee hearing, which was held less than 24 hours after it was announced New Jersey lost 9,500 jobs in January - more than half of all the jobs lost in America, they struck down three amendments. The proposals which were dismissed would have:
- Exempted companies with less than 50 employees from participating in the program. This would have brought the program in line with federal unpaid leave laws.
- Exempted the top 10% of wage earners at a company, ensuring an organization would not miss key personnel for up to 12 weeks.
- They even voted against allowing employees to voluntarily opt out of the program.
As CIANJ said with the Millionaire's Tax, the half-millionaire's tax, the sales tax increase and the steadfast refusal of the legislature to cut the size of government - at some point, those legislative actions are going to have negative results on our economy. Now that we have some of the highest costs of doing business in the nation, the impact is becoming apparent. We are a net loser in migration and now after a year of nearly stagnant job growth are in a net loser in jobs as well.
Call your Senator now or click here to e-mail them and urge them to vote no on Paid Family Leave.
