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

The state must stop trying to impose mandates and requirements on businesses that our competitors in other states simply don't have to deal with.

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Philip Kirschner, New Jersey Business and Industry Association president. The Associated Press State & Local Wire.

We are about to place a mandate on our struggling employers that does not exist in 48 other states. This is not a welcoming message to companies looking to expand here or explore New Jersey as a place of investment.

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Kevin Friedlander, spokesperson for the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce, The Newark Star-Ledger.

This is why NJBIA and its member companies have been fighting passage of a paid family leave mandate in the Legislature. Despite its good intentions, the mandate would greatly impair the ability of employers to operate their businesses and meet their customers' needs. NJBIA members have sent 50,000 messages to legislators and the governor opposing it. Yet, state policymakers seem to be oblivious. We are teetering on the edge of recession, we are losing jobs, and they want to impose a huge new mandate that has been adopted by only one other state, California...What New Jersey needs now, more than ever, is to have its government leadership focus fiercely on what can be done to strengthen the state's business climate and create new jobs. Businesses are tired of elected officials who say they support a growing economy and small business, only to take actions that contradict their words, like voting for paid family leave.

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Philip Kirschner, president of the New Jersey Business & Industry Association. The Newark Star-Ledger.

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.

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Jim Leonard, senior vice president of Chamber of Commerce. The Newark Star-Ledger.