A bill that would expand requirements for employers to provide paid leave for their workers met resistance at the Assembly Appropriations Committee Monday.
Current state law requires employers to offer extended paid leave only if they have 30 employees or more. The bill would reduce that to five employees. But the measure received pushback from the business community as well as from workers rights advocates, who want those protections for every employee in New Jersey.
“We support the bill only with amendments; the amendments are really critical. Without it, [you] leave one million workers behind. Those are women, low-income workers, more precarious workers that need job protection who need to be able to take benefits when they need, and that they contribute to with payroll taxes,” said Yarrow Willman-Cole of New Jersey Citizen Action.
Elissa Frank of the New Jersey Business and Industry Association said the bill would create “an undue burden for small businesses.”
“This bill will apply specifically to small business and microbusiness. You’re going to add 170,000 new businesses that were not previously in the program,” said Assemblyman Brian Bergen (R-Morris).
The bill passed out of committee and now has to go to the full Senate in this lame-duck legislative session.
