Skip to main content

New Laws for 2020: S3170 (New Jersey)


On January 21st, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed S3170 into law, which expands the Millville Dallas Airmotive Plant Job Loss Notification Act ("NJWARN").

S3170 expands the NJWARN Act by requiring 90 days' advance notice of mass layoffs and plant closings for employers with 100 or more employees.  (The current advance notice requirement is 60 days.)  Of note, the legislation now counts part time workers as part of the 100 or more employees threshold, a change from the current language of the NJWARN Act.  As currently written, to trigger the NJWARN Act, a layoff must result in the discharge of at least 50 employees at the establishment and the discharged employees must make up 33% of the total workforce of the establishment.  S3170 retains the 50 employee threshold but does away with the 33% requirement.

The legislation also requires severance pay to be paid to employees affected by mass layoffs "equal to one week of pay for each full year of employment."  If less than 90 days' notice is provided, discharged employees are to receive an additional four weeks of pay.  (The NJWARN Act only requires employers to pay severance if they did not meet the notice requirement.)

With S3170 set to take effect July 19th, employers in the state would be smart to start taking steps to ensure compliance, given that New Jersey will soon be the first state to guarantee severance as a result of mass layoffs.


For additional information:  https://www.natlawreview.com/article/new-jersey-to-become-first-state-to-guarantee-severance-payments-due-to-mass-layoffs

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NLRB: Discussion Among Employees About Tip Pooling is Protected Concerted Activity

  This Advice Memorandum from the National Labor Relations Board’s Associate General Counsel, Jayme Sophir, addressed whether employees which discussed and complained about tip pooling at work constituted protected concerted activity. In relevant part, an employer in New York operated a chain of steakhouses.  While tip pooling was in place at these steakhouses, some of the employees objected to it on the grounds that it was not transparent and improperly divided tips among the workers.  Employees were told not to complain or talk to each other about the tip pool and were told that doing so would endanger their jobs.  Despite the employer later attempting to provide some clarity as to how the tips were being divided, rancor still existed among some employees.  At one point, the employees were told by a general manager that some employees that had been talking about the tip pool were “cleared out” and the employer would continue to do so. In the Advice Memorandum,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Utah Non-Compete Bill Falters in House

Last month, a non-compete bill sponsored by Representative Brian Greene (Republican from Pleasant Grove) & up for vote in the Utah House failed to make it through the Legislature.  The bill sought to ban enforcement of non-competes if they came after a worker was already employed, given no compensation (such as a bonus or promotion) for signing the non-compete, and laid off within six months.  However, by a 22 - 49 vote, the bill was resoundingly defeated after some business groups lobbied to kill the non-compete bill.  One group in particular, The Free Enterprise Utah coalition, argued that the Utah State Legislature should hold off on any changes to non compete laws in the state until a survey about non competes was done among Utah businesses.  Representative Greene had countered this claim and argued that a survey was not needed to show that the current non compete laws in the states allowed many businesses, including some small high tech companies i...
Post a Comment
Read more

What I've Been Reading This Week

Recently, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Commissioner, Chai Feldblum, had her re-nomination on the brink, after Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee took steps to block it .  Readers might have heard that late last week, Commissioner Feldblum's re-nomination quietly slipped away and she tweeted out a thank you to supporters and friends, acknowledging that her time at the EEOC was over.  While there has not been much in the way of a further update in regard to that ongoing saga, we wait to see how things will play out at the EEOC, now that it has lost a quorum until additional Commissioners are confirmed by the Senate. For the time being, there are other developments for readers to review this week.  In particular, I call attention to the article on managing a wage & hour audit by the Department of Labor as well as steps an employer can take to better ensure compliance with the ADA. As always, below are a couple articles that caught my eye this week. ...
Post a Comment
Read more