NJBIA is urging the Legislature to vote against legislation on Friday that mandates worker retention during a minor change in ownership of service worker contracts, effectively removing an employer’s right to make their own operational decisions, even if there are health and safety concerns.
Bill S-2389 (Singleton, D-7; Zwicker, D-16)/A-4682 (Schaer, D-36; Timberlake, D-34; Danielsen, D-17) previously required a vast range of full- and part-time service employees, including subcontractors and vendors, to be retained for three months whenever a business changes ownership of service contracts.
The legislation has since been amended to reduce the timeframe for employee retention from 90 days to 60 days. The provision of criminal penalties for not retaining workers, also a part of the initial bill, has also been removed.
However, NJBIA Vice President of Government Affairs Alexis Bailey said, despite the amendments, the association still strongly opposes the legislation.
“We greatly appreciate the amendments made to the bill,” Bailey said. “However, we continue to have grave concerns about the impact this legislation will have on a business’s ability to change service contract vendors when they need to for legitimate business reasons.”
“Even with the amendments, the bill still imposes the most far-reaching iteration of employee retention mandates to date in New Jersey and can have significant health and safety implications for our residents, employees and employers.”
Bailey explained that the bill would still require a new service vendor, referred to as a “successor employer,” to maintain the previous vendor’s employees if they are providing the same type of service.
“For example, if Company A contracts with ABC Cleaning Service to clean their facility and ends that contract to hire XYZ Cleaning Service instead, XYZCleaning Service will be mandated to assume ABC Cleaning Service’s employees for 60 days,” Bailey said.
“As evident by this example, successor employers would be mandated to hire another vendor’s employees regardless of whether the original vendor had other work assignments for those employees, if the successor employer had their own employees to bring on to the job whose employment status may now be at risk, or if the covered location contracting for service work was dissatisfied with the job being done by the previous vendor’s employees,” Bailey said.
“This provision makes it impractical to ever change service contracts, stiflingcompetition, efficiency as well as consumer health and safety,” Bailey said.
The wide range of employers and facilities captured under this legislation include:
- Multifamily residential buildings with more than 50 units
- Commercial or office buildings that are more than 100,000 square feet
- Primary, secondary and tertiary schools
- Cultural centers such as museums,
- Convention centers, arenas, and performance halls
- Industrial sites
- Pharmaceutical labs
- Airports and train stations
- Hospitals and nursing care facilities
- Senior care centers and other healthcare provider locations
- State courts
- Warehouse and distribution centers
“This bill will negatively impact a significant number of businesses and largeswaths of the state’s economy,” Bailey said. “We implore the Legislature to notadvance this bill as written, as it will hamstring the ability of employers tochange service contract vendors for the betterment of not only their business, but the health and safety of New Jerseyans who utilize their goods and services.”
