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“Temporary Worker’s Bill of Rights”, Protecting Temporary Worker Jobs

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the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Trenton NJ,  the New Jersey Staffing Alliance (NJSA), the voice for staffing firms across the Garden State, has over the past year discussed its views with members of the state legislature on S-511/A-1474 also referred to “Temporary Worker’s Bill of Rights” to include language that would ensure staffing agencies remain in compliance with new administrative regulations while protecting the safety and health of the workers they serve. NJSA firmly believes that while Governor Murphy’s conditional veto of A-1474 addressed several administrative issues, it left in place significant elements that would cause not only great harm to the law-abiding temporary staffing industry, but also its clients and ultimately the citizens whom this bill’s sponsors purported to benefit and protect.

NJSA’s mission is to promote and encourage high standards of ethical practice to ensure the finest possible service to the public. NJSA members are required to adhere to its best business practices and principles for hiring temporary workers through NJSA’s Code of Ethics. This includes adding protections for workers like Arlene Bautista, who was born and raised in the Dominican Republic before coming to New Jersey. The mother of two started as a temporary employee at a New Jersey staffing agency and is now a full-time recruiter for a company in Parsippany.

“When my kids were small I was able to put them through private school, as a young Spanish woman I wouldn’t have been able to, everything I was able to do by working there,” said Arlene Bautista. She also shared the domino effect of her recruitment role, as she was even able to place her grown children in roles that they are in to this day.

Bill S-511/A-1474 also posits that contingencies such as removing transportation costs from worker’s pay will level the playing field for temporary workers. However, temporary workers who are afforded transportation by a temp agency save on costs to own, insure, and purchase gas for their own car. Meanwhile, there are warehouses in New Jersey that are not on a public transportation route, so workers must rely on their own vehicles or carpools.

“I never received a complaint for the transport fee in all my time working as a recruiter. I have talked to people who ask if they offer transportation, especially for some people who don’t have a car and can’t pay car insurance so that is something that it doesn’t hurt them to pay that’s how I see it, it’s something so they can have that option if needed,” Arlene remarked. I don’t find myself or the people complaining about the pay or the transportation cost.”

Minister Bo Jackson, who founded a church in the City of Elizabeth train station, started as a temporary worker and now owns his own business, Best Solution Pest Management, which has been very successful due in large part to his experiences with temp work.

“My opinion as a business owner, as someone having nothing, making $100 a month, to owning a business myself now: temp agencies are vital especially in urban areas,” said Minister Bo Jackson. In regards to S-511/A-1474 requiring the same benefits for temp workers that full-time employees receive at a company, “Even down to the benefits, giving the same benefits as an actual job, they are taking the temp out of the agency, they’re trying to make a temp agency a permanent agency.”

Minister Bo Jackson also remarked, “As a successful business owner, I own my own home, have two trucks, over 700 accounts across Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Had it not been for the staffing agency that helped me find a job, but temp agencies in general, I could have easily been one of the statistics finding a reason to justify doing something wrong in order to provide for my family.”

Rosa Muñoz of Paterson recently worked with a temp agency to help secure a job in a clothing factory where she enjoys going to work every day while she raises her 14-year old son. NJSA member agencies like the one Muñoz obtained work from provide temporary workers at least the minimum required ACA equivalent benefits as required by law, with many providing a variety of affordable options and tiered plans for temporary workers to choose from.

“I’m so excited because the current place I am working at has made me an offer to become a permanent full-time placement,” exclaimed Rosa Muñoz. “The job will have benefits, health insurance, and personal days. The factory is really organized, they treat me really well, and my time there is enjoyable.”

Recently, S-3182 introduced by Senator Schepisi provides certain protections for employees of temporary help service firms that closely mirrors the Massachusetts law. S-3182 allows temporary staffing firms to survive in the current New Jersey business climate while safeguarding worker rights and not destroying the temporary sector in the state, whereas A-1474 does not.

Instead of A-1474, NJSA would support the legislature addressing this bill’s stated objectives with a more narrowly focused alternative bill. Some of the details of protections for temp workers are described below:

Using the law successfully passed in Massachusetts as a model (for which the staffing industry has already developed methods and business practices in order to be in compliance),

  • require temporary staffing firms to provide employees a notice with essentially many (but not all) of the job order information details that were listed in section 3.a.(1) through (11) of A-1474.

  • Specify which categories of positions are subject to this notice provision which focuses the alternative bill to low-skilled light industrial positions which are the primary categories of staffing that were the focus of A-1474.

  • List fees for services that temporary staffing firms cannot charge temporary employees.

  • Provide additional protections and clarity regarding use of temporary staffing firms’ referred or required transportation services, especially employee transportation fees.

  • List specific actions that temporary staffing firms shall not do.

  • NJSA would also support either amending S-3182 or an alternative bill that would include this approach as well as the following additional subjects be added to the bill. The following contingencies are just several examples NJSA proposes:

    • In addition to some minor amendments to the language in S-3182, NJSA recommends the following additional subjects be included:

    • To ensure compliance with the new administrative requirements:

      • There would be significant financial penalties for non-compliance by temporary staffing firms in providing the written job order with the detailed information specified in the bill, especially for repeated and purposeful violations.

    • To address the reality that the industry’s “bad actors” generally are not registered as temporary help service firms or consulting firms with the NJ Division of Consumer Affairs (NJDCA):

      • Increase both the level of financial penalties and the division’s enforcement regarding failure to register with the division.

    Lastly, the bill needs a reasonable implementation and enforcement date as recommended by NJDCA and other involved state agencies and departments, with the input of New Jersey’s staffing industry.

    “NJSA would be happy to share its opinions on this legislation with any legislator and their staff in order to help temporary workers obtain new, attainable protections, as well as to hold the ‘bad actors’ accountable and subject them to increased financial penalties without jeopardizing the majority of law-abiding, beneficial employers in the temporary staffing sector,” NJSA confirmed. “We support this concentrated effort here in New Jersey since what we are providing is effective in Massachusetts.“

    Please join the NJSA in this fight by visiting protectnjjobs.com.

3 thoughts on ““Temporary Worker’s Bill of Rights”, Protecting Temporary Worker Jobs

  1. Gig worker’s Certificate of Economic Death, more like it.

    First, choke off opportunities for self-employment.

    Second, force all companies to vexxinate, brainwash, and indoctrinate all employees.

    There is no step three.

    3
    3
  2. I want to unsubscribe

  3. Temporary Workers
    Bill of Rights

    OR

    Temporary
    Workers Bill of Rights?

    Inquiring Minds want to know.

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