12-05-2025
New bill would remove some protections for temporary workers in New Jersey
The new bill comes less than two years after the law known as the "Temp Workers Bill of Rights" went into effect. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)
The sponsor of 2023 legislation that created new workplace protections for temporary workers blasted a new bill that would remove many of those safeguards.
'I believe in equal pay. I believe in equal benefits for equal work,' Sen. Joe Cryan (D-Union) told the Senate Labor Committee Monday.
The new bill, which the committee discussed but did not vote on Monday, comes less than two years after the law known as the 'Temp Workers Bill of Rights'' went into effect. That law requires employers to provide basic information on jobs in workers' native language and guarantees a minimum wage to an estimated 127,000 temporary workers, staffed mostly in warehouses and factories.
Sen. Paul Sarlo (D-Bergen), sponsor of the new bill, had voted in support of the earlier law, which passed after a years-long push by labor advocates who said the state's temporary workers were victims of exploitative job conditions and wage theft.
Sarlo's bill seeks to make several key changes to the temp worker law.
The current law requires staffing agencies to pay temp workers the same pay and benefits given to full-time workers performing the same work. Sarlo's bill would revise that to remove the benefits provision and leaving only equal pay. Under the bill, equal pay would mean the agency is required to pay the equivalent of a client's entry-level pay rate for a worker with minimum qualifications.
A provision of the law requiring staffing agencies to disclose pay rates would also change under Sarlo's bill, which would reverse that requirement.
The law also applies to New Jersey temp workers who take jobs in other states. Sarlo's bill would ax that provision, saying it is 'causing third-party clients in other states to reduce their use of temporary laborers from New Jersey.'
Mike Nolfo, a franchisee for Express Employment Professionals, said his company employs nearly 2,000 temporary workers daily at 300 local businesses. Nolfo supports the new bill, and said it's an opportunity to help mom-and-pop shops that are struggling because of the new law. He agreed that Pennsylvania companies aren't using New Jersey agencies because of state laws.
'We lost virtually all of our clients in East Stroudsburg because of this law, because they just don't want to comply with it,' he said. 'There's a lot of pieces to it. We're not saying the whole thing. Some of it doesn't make sense.'
The temp worker law passed out of the Legislature in February 2023 with the minimum number of yes votes a bill needs to pass the Senate, 21. It went into full effect that summer.
Staffing agencies and business groups sued over the law, claiming it is unconstitutionally vague and makes New Jersey less competitive. Cryan noted the plaintiffs have lost all their legal challenges.
Cryan said supporters of the new bill say it's aimed at cleaning up mistakes in the law, but he called the measure 'far from that.'
Opponents of the bill said weakening the protections of temporary workers only hurts vulnerable people who are abused and exploited in the workplace. Nedia Morsy, executive director of immigrant advocacy group Make the Road New Jersey, said it's 'stunning that in a climate of federal attacks on workers, on immigrants, and on the institutions that protect both, that a bill like this would even see the light of day.'
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