New Jersey Family Leave Insurance

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

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.

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Dennis, blogging at NJ Tax Revolution blog, The Newark Star-Ledger

I would say that this is still bad legislation for business. It's the same legislative nightmare and the same issues that we argued at 12 weeks are there for six. It's still hard to get temporary workers part time, and it's still going to create a hardship for business.

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Laurie Ehlbeck, state director of the New Jersey chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business, The Bergen County Record

The nanny state continues, churning out one bad piece of legislation after another!....Yes, we should have compassion for people, compassion for our workforce. When my father had a heart attack in November, which went well into December, I had to take time off - but I worked around it ....Not all workplaces can do that. Those that can should look for ways to accommodate employees, if possible. This is a slippery slope we're on in New Jersey. The nanny state legislators want to give away everything, but forcing this kind of legislation on employers is the beginning of the end. It will drive employers right out of New Jersey, increasing the already alarming exodus of manufacturing and other jobs and residents in general.

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Ann Richardson, blogging at the Business at Hand, The Newark Star-Ledger

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.

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Steven Lonegan, Republican mayor of Bogota and executive director of Americans for Prosperity, The Bergen County Record