lawmakers are taking another stab at expanding New Jersey's Paid Family Leave law Advocates wanted to see job protections for workers who take family leave extended to all businesses Statewide regardless of size but lawmakers recently amended the bill to exclude businesses with less than five employees that's a compromise some legislators thought would help it cross the finish line but as Raven Santana reports activists argue this version leaves behind more than a million workers in need pay leave is a critical component um so that caregivers can effectively participate in the labor workforce today a bill that would require companies with five or more employees to provide Paid Family Leave Advance out of committee it's a proposed revision to current law which requires a company with at least 30 employees to provide them after 12 weeks of paid leave during a 2-year period to care for a sick relative or for a newborn or a child who has recently been adopted or fostered well paid Le really helps level the playing field for all employers smaller employers may not be able to afford to pay uh maternity leave parental leave Family Leave themselves so what we have in New Jersey is a state program and it's actually funded only through employee payroll taxes and so it actually costs the employer nothing yl Wilman Cole is workplace Justice program director for NJ citizen action Wilman Cole joined other Advocates who share testimony and explain how challenging life can be for workers without paid family leave for me with my previous Airline um unfortunately I suffered a miscarriage and I had to take a lot of time off for surgery and self-care and I did not have access to uh paid leave through the state I didn't Al I also did not have access to any type of disability or leave through my job and it was it was a lot of things I didn't understand and I didn't have the of course going through grief and all of that I didn't have the mental capacity to try to fight the the red lines and and read and and figure this out and I didn't have anyone advocating for me I didn't have any explanations either I was just told I don't qualify but Advocates today said they still don't support the bill as it's currently written this bill only addresses the size of the employer in terms of job protection and really there's about a million workers that are left out because of the two other components of job protection eligibility which require that you're at your job a year and that you work th000 hours those are not addressed in this legislation and what it means is we're disproportionately leaving out mostly women workers lowincome workers part-time workers more precarious workers already that really need the paid leave they need the job protection because without it they can't risk losing their job and they can't afford to go without pay so they need both the job protection and the paid leave benefit under the current law employees would be able to return to the same job after that period and employers would ALS also be required to maintain that absent employees benefits including insurance but businesses with under 30 employees are not required to do so but the State Chamber uh respectfully opposes this legislation because of the disproportionate impact it's going to have on small businesses so we ask this legislative body to please vote no on this legislation and let business owners decide what's best for their organization but the bill isn't a win-win for everyone a number of representatives from organizations including the njbia argue that the bill will hurt not help small businesses so for example if you have a business that employs as few as 15 employees so that would be captured under this bill let's say an employee goes out on leave maybe they're handling HR accounting compliance they have a lot of tasks that they cover if they go out on leave and let's say somebody that's handling clerical work wants to cover for them and they do a fantastic job and the employer sees that they really appreciate what they're seeing from this employee and they want to actually Elevate somebody internally they wouldn't be able to do so under this bill because they have to provide job rein statement to the person that went out on leave to assemblyman offs line of questioning before we think that may increase if you are seeking to fill skilled or knowledged uh roles with temporary labor that you know may not have uh permanency or defined date because there's already a guaranteed job going back to somebody else when they return from leave still both sides say they're disappointed that their amendments to the bill were not included and the bill will move to the floor as is to be voted on on Monday for NJ Spotlight New NJ Spotlight news I'm Raven Santana I'm Raven Santana