New Jersey Family Leave Insurance
In March of 2008, New Jersey became the second state to implement paid family leave. The Family Leave Insurance (FLI) law, like its California counterpart, allows six weeks to care for a new child or a seriously ill relative, including domestic partners or civil union partners. It provides up to two-thirds of salary, with a cap of $524 a week, paid for through payroll deduction, which would amount to about $33 a year for the average worker (although the contribution rate was lowered by half in the beginning of 2011). As with the California law, job protection is not provided.
Cry Wolf Quotes
This socialist diktat takes feel-good politics to a new level….the basic argument for this socialist propaganda is the necessity for Big Brother to subsidize an army of breastfeeding single mothers….Ultimately, the inevitable impact of the cost of the paid family leave measure will fall on the shoulders of the ever-diminishing minority in this state: those who build businesses and create the real jobs that sustain our economy. You know, the ones moving to Florida and other states with no state income tax and few of the ridiculous government regulations that make New Jersey the worst state in the nation for small business.
Small businesses can and do fail because of this. There is a cost, both in dollars and in disruption. The cost in dollars is the cost of a temporary worker for which the company pays a premium, the training of a replacement worker and the overtime paid to remaining workers who help fill in for that absent employee.
So when businesses are already looking for opportunities over the rivers and past the bay, what does our Senate do? It decides to insist that business provide paid time off for family leave...There is a reason that only two states have enacted this legislation. It is because states do not want to lose the businesses that make up the backbone of their budgets. New Jersey senators don't care because this is other people's money anyway. They can stand and pontificate over how they are helping people while those same citizens' employers say ... goodbye.
There is definitely a major disconnect between our leaders in Trenton and the people who pay taxes and employ residents. Legislators and the governor seem to think our residents and employers have deep pockets and unlimited resources to fund their bloated bureaucracy, when that is far from the case. This madness has to end.
