The state Senate voted 24-12 without debate on Monday to pass legislation, strongly opposed by NJBIA, that would expand the job reinstatement provisions of New Jersey’s Paid Family Leave Act to include smaller businesses with 15 or more employees.
The legislation, A-3451, must now return to to the Assembly for concurrence with Senate committee amendments and final consideration. If enacted into law, it would change the employee-threshold used to determine which New Jersey businesses must guarantee job protection to employees returning from 12 weeks of paid family leave. Currently, only businesses with 30 or more employees must reinstate workers to the same position that they had prior to leave. The legislation would affect smaller businesses by lowering that employee threshold from 30 to 15.
In a letter on Friday to members of the Senate, NJBIA Chief Government Affairs Officer Christopher Emigholz noted that only 15 states nationwide offer any form of paid family leave and only 11 of those guarantee job protection for employees after the leave is finished.
“In other words, New Jersey would be placing its smallest employers into a narrow national category—an outlier beyond most states we directly compete with for jobs and investment,” Emigholz wrote.
When one employee in a 15-person business takes paid family leave, it means 7% of a small business’ workforce is gone for 12 weeks, Emigholz noted. Unlike a larger firm that can more easily shift responsibilities among many workers, a small firm may need to hire a temporary replacement worker to keep the business running.
If the job reinstatement mandate is extended to smaller businesses, the employer must give the worker who had been out on leave for three months the exact same position back, even if the replacement worker the business has already spent weeks training is doing a better job.
“We hope this example demonstrates how cumbersome and counterproductive this proposal would be for the very small businesses we repeatedly say we want to protect and see grow in New Jersey—especially when most competing states do not impose similar mandates,” Emigholz wrote.
