The State of New Jersey just keeps making it more expensive to operate a business in the state. New Jersey has now become the 10th state to adopt mandatory paid sick leave. It goes into effect on October 29, 2018. Giving sick leave to employees has been generally a standard in America. What these new regulations do is go much further. All employees, whether temporary, part-time, full-time, salaried, hourly or paid on commission, must now accrue one hour of sick leave for every 30 hours worked. Employers may cap an employee’s sick leave accrual and use at 40 hours per benefit year.
The crazy thing is hiring a temp worker because someone else is out sick or on maternity leave now involves given such a person also gets sick leave benefits. Then the employer and employee may mutually agree to a payout in the final month of the benefit year of 50% or 100% of the employee’s unused sick time. If unused time is paid out in full, carryover is not required. If 50% is paid out, the remaining 50% will carry over. If the employee does not want to be paid out, or the employer chooses not to offer this option, all unused time will carry over up to 40 hours.
Employers may grant sick leave up front in a lump sum. When using the lump sum method, employers may either pay employees for unused sick leave at the end of the calendar year or allow carryover. With lump sum plans, whether to pay out or allow carryover is the employer’s choice – the agreement of the employee is not required. In no case will time be forfeit, unless it is in excess of the carryover limit of 40 hours.
This is now extending benefits to people who are not regular employees. Retail stores hire workers just for the Christmas season. That means they will need to account for sick leave and carry this over if the person returns for a temporary job in the future year? The accounting this imposes on small business is just insane. Of course, politicians want to pretend to be caring for the people when in fact they may be reducing job opportunities for them in the end. Automated registers are showing up everywhere. A grocery store to Home Depot have registers you scan in your own purchases, pay, and leave. The more regulations, the more we will see auto-registers expand into many retail operations to solve the rising regulation and costs.
And they wonder Why New Jersey is #2 State behind NYC with net-migration leaving and business as well?
