Mars Wrigley, the massive global snacking and confectionery division of Mars Incorporated, is leaving its Newark headquarters, the latest in a series of household-name employers in New Jersey taking their business elsewhere.
In a WARN filing, first reported by NJBIZ on Friday, the candy food company which counts M&M’s, Snickers, Twix, Milky Way and Skittles among its brands, said it will eliminate 307 jobs in Newark by mid-October – on the heels of a $100 million expansion of its Chicago headquarters.
NJBIA President and CEO Michele Siekerka said the continuing departures of some of New Jersey’s most venerable employers is extremely concerning.
“On a summer Friday when people should be getting excited about the weekend ahead, we are instead hit with the news of another unfortunate exodus of a job creator in New Jersey,” Siekerka said.
“We need to wrap our arms around this and do something now that sends a message to our largest employers that things are going to change so we can stop this disturbing trend.”
New Jersey has now lost more than 9,700 jobs just within WARN notices this year.
Last month, Samsung announced its decision to relocate its U.S. corporate headquarters in Englewood Cliffs to Texas by the end of the year.
That came less than a week after ExxonMobil shareholders voted to make Texas their official corporate home, ending the company’s 144-year legal incorporation in the Garden State that dates to its 1882 origin as Standard Oil of New Jersey.
Adding insult to injury, NJBIA was ranked dead last in the U.S. for business friendliness according to CNBC’s Top States for Business rankings earlier this month.
In an interview on Jersey Thing with Eric Scott on NJ101.5 this week – prior to the news of Mars Wrigley’s pending departure – Siekerka said the time is now for New Jersey to change its approach to business after decades of anti-business policies.
“What more do we need to see in order to know now's the time for a reform agenda and change things here in the state of New Jersey?” Siekerka asked Scott.
“We are really at a manic state right now of just pushing on our businesses and taking advantage of our job creators to the point they're not going to stay here and grow.”
Siekerka also renewed her call for more predictability and stability as it relates to business policy in New Jersey so employers will have more of a comfort level in investing in New Jersey.
Prior to this year, Gov. Phil Murphy installed a new Corporate Transit Fee just as New jersey’s largest employers were expecting and planning for the corporation surtax to sunset.
This year, Gov. Mikie Sherrill adopted a controversial Murphy-era rule that makes wholesale changes to the ABC test that makes it nearly impossible to prove that a worker is an independent contractor.
Sherrill also included in her FY27 budget a new tax on business that penalizes employers with 50 or more workers on Medicaid, which NJBIA has labeled as an unfair measure to businesses and nonprofits that will likely have serious unintended consequences for many workers who choose Medicaid coverage.
Siekerka lauded Sherrill for her “Save You Time and Money” agenda that will indeed help businesses with costs and burdens.
“It’s a good one for the business community, and we're sitting at the table on that permitting and regulation that is critically important to driving down the actual cost day-to-day of permitting and expansion,” Siekerka said.
“But the reality is, if nobody's going to put shovels here, then we're not going to need expedited permits. So that's going to be a great process, but we need to make sure that we're going to get people to invest here.”
