NJSA/MASA Executive Leadership Conference April 17-18, 2024

Speaker Presentations

LABOR & EMPLOYMENT LAW: RECENT LEGAL & RULEMAKING

New Jersey New Rules for Temporary Staffing Agencies

On February 6, 2023, the “Temp Workers’ Bill of Rights” bill was signed into law https://pub.njleg.state.nj.us/Bills/2022/A1500/1474_R2.PDF.

The new wage and hour guidelines were created for temporary help service firms (temp agencies or staffing agencies) and “temporary laborers” they employ. The thrust of the legislation appears to adjust misalignment between temporary workers and permanent employees with respect to pay, benefits, and working conditions. It also increases oversight of the temporary staffing firm industry in the state with significant penalties for violations.

The New Jersey law defines “Temporary laborer” as “a person who contracts for employment in a designated classification (occupational categories the U.S. Department Labor’s (DOL) Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)) placement with a temporary help service firm.” The Temporary labor category does not include professional employees (29 U.S.C. s.152) or most secretaries and administrative assistants The law will go into effect 90 days after its signage.

Some big changes for temp agencies include:

· Employment Notification – Temp firms must provide specific information on the first day of an assignment whenever a temporary help service firm agrees to send a person to work as a temporary laborer; written notice of schedule changes not less than 48 hours in advance to the temporary laborer, when possible, with temporary staffing firm bearing the burden of showing that it was not possible to provide the required notice.

· No temporary help service firm can send any temporary laborer to any place where a strike, a lockout, or other labor dispute exists without providing at the time of dispatch, a statement, in writing, informing the temporary laborer of the labor dispute, and the laborer’s right to refuse the assignment.

· Temp firms must effectively communicate the information required in most information to temporary laborers in Spanish or in any other language that is generally understood in the locale of the temporary help service firm.

· Whenever a temporary help service firm sends one or more persons to work as temporary laborers, Temp staffing firms must keep the records relating to that transaction and maintain all records for six (6) years from their creation.

· Temporary help service firm will be jointly and severally liable for the conduct and performance of any person who transports a temporary laborer in the designated classifications from the firm to a work site, unless the transporter is: (1) a public mass transportation system; (2) a common carrier; (3) the temporary laborer providing his or her own transportation.

· Right to receive pay: Temporary worker have the right to receive prompt payment of wages, including overtime pay when due. Also, to meet minimum wage thresholds.

· Temp staffing firms cannot restrict temporary workers from accepting a regular position for any other employment or retaliate against a temp worker by firing or treating them unfairly in any other way for exercising their rights in this law.

· Temp firms must give equal pay to temporary laborer assigned to work at a third party client in a designated classification placement and not less than the [same] average rate of pay and [equivalent] average cost of benefits of an equivalent permanent worker doing the same or substantially similar work on the jobs that requires equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and under similar working conditions.

· An aggrieved person or temp worker will have standing to bring a civil action in the Superior Court against a temporary staffing firm or third party for violating provisions of this Act.

· The Commissioner of Labor and Workforce Development and Director of the Division of Consumer Affairs in the Department of Law and Public Safety have the authority to deny suspend, revoke, or refuse to renew any [registration] or certification issued to covered firms.

This law goes into effect in 180 days from creation. Temp agencies and firms have significant wage and hour, notice, disclosure, anti-discrimination, and recordkeeping requirements with heavy penalties for noncompliance. This lead time can be supported to best review and bring into compliance current practices as a liability and risk mitigation measure.