The New Jersey Staffing Alliance (NJSA) is very disappointed that Governor Murphy didn’t make the substantive changes to the bill that we recommended. The NJSA takes pride in our workforce and making sure that our employees are protected. The staffing industry’s sole job is to connect employers with workers, and this legislation makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the staffing industry to continue to provide hundreds of thousands of jobs in New Jersey. It is the Association’s position that this legislation cannot stand as is.

NJSA asks legislators to use this time following the conditional veto to push for critical substantive changes so the staffing industry can continue to function in New Jersey.

Critical areas include, but are not limited to:

1)The bill’s requirement for temp worker pay and benefits to match that of regular employees will be problematic for employers as pay is proprietary competitive information. Additionally, the bill fails to consider employers rewarding worker loyalty, training, knowledge of the company etc. that are factored into pay or that some employee benefits provided by third parties, such as health insurance, can’t be extended to temp workers.

2) The bill prohibits agencies from charging temporary workers for transportation the agency provides to or from work. Temp agencies that supply transportation for workers who don’t have their own should not have to bear the cost of it, as in almost every industry most employees are responsible for their own transportation.

This bill contains several problematic areas for which we have advocated changes and have been ignored. The Bill in its current form could tip some staffing agencies, particularly smaller ones, to shut their doors, which could cause drastic reductions in the 500,000 temporary employees New Jersey staffing firms supply to every industry and job category in the state that generate almost $6 billion dollars in the state’s economy.

We are looking for fairness in the regulations that are presented so we can continue to work together for a reasonable compromise that will benefit temp workers, employers and the staffing agencies that bring them together.