New Jersey Division of Wage and Hour Compliance Proposes Regulations Under Paid Sick Leave Law

n prior Client Alerts we have alerted New Jersey Employers to the state’s new paid seek leave statute, which takes effect a week from today. We provided a website where the employee NOTICE (which must be both posted and given to existing and new employees) can be found, at least in its present draft form (available online here).

New Jersey’s Division of Wage and Hour Compliance now has published proposed regulations (available online here), which are intended to implement the statute and to assist Employers to comply with it. Unfortunately, there are considerable problems with the proposed regulations. For example, they provide that Employers with employees who have fluctuating work weeks, are paid by piece work, are tipped employees, or who work two or more jobs for an employer having different pay rates, should be paid sick leave based on the last seven (7) work days where leave was not taken. Those earnings would then be divided by the hours worked during those seven (7) days to determine the hourly rate used to pay sick leave. This will impose difficult record keeping obligations on Employers and might lead to unfairness to both Employers and employees where the number calculated by this method does not represent the employee’s average hourly pay rate over a more representative period. Similarly, two employees having the same job, but who work a different number of hours in the seven (7) work day measuring period would be paid sick leave at different rates.  

Employers should familiarize themselves with the proposed regulations and either make comments directly to the Office of Legal and Regulatory Services or consider having the attorneys of Reger Rizzo & Darnall do so on their behalf. Comments may be sent to:

            David Fish, Executive Director

            Office of Legal and Regulatory Services

            NJ Department of Labor and Workforce Development

            PO Box 110

            13th Floor

            Trenton, New Jersey 08625-0110

            E-mail: David.Fish@dol.nj.gov

If you have any questions, or would like additional information, please contact Bob Small, Partner in Reger Rizzo & Darnall’s Employment Practices Group,  at 215.495.6541, or via email at rsmall@regerlaw.com.