Chamber Desk Letter to full Assembly on Paid Family Leave
Thursday, March 13, 2008

MEMORANDUM

TO: Members of the New Jersey General Assembly

FROM: Debra P. DiLorenzo, President & CEO

RE: A-873 (Albano / Oliver / Greenstein / DeAngelo) &

S-786 (Sweeney/Buono)

DATE: March 13, 2008

The Chamber of Commerce of Southern New Jersey strongly opposes A-873 (Albano / Oliver / Greenstein / DeAngelo) / S-786 (Sweeney/Buono). This bill will make operating a business in New Jersey more expensive, more challenging and less competitive at a time when we can least afford to do so.

Finding a trained, competent workforce was the number one challenge facing our member companies according to our 2007 Membership survey. This bill will make this problem even worse. As more workers avail themselves of this broadly defined leave, businesses will have to find and train temporary replacement workers. The cost of doing so is well documented in our prior testimonies on this bill, including the cost of continuing to pay the health insurance of the worker out on leave. More difficult to quantify, however, is the impact on employee morale – that is, those employees who will have to cover the work of their fellow employee or take time away from their work to train the replacement worker – and productivity.

Paid family leave is one more huge obstacle to operating a business, especially a small business, profitably in our State. Businesses are already feeling the impacts of high property and business taxes, increasing health insurance costs, and operating in a highly regulated environment with myriad labor and employment, environmental and taxation laws. The results of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s fourth quarter 2007 survey of our members were chilling. 37% percent of our member companies who responded said that, given the opportunity to do it over again, they would not open, expand, or relocate their business to New Jersey. Only 28% of the businesses responding said they would do it again given the choice. Clearly, a full 58% of our member companies responding to this survey are not happy doing business in this State. This huge red flag should not be ignored.

Lastly, no one has documented the impact this legislation will have on state, county and municipal government budgets and services and, therefore, the taxpayer. Having more workers out on leave costs money in lost productivity and overtime. The taxpayer will have to absorb these costs.

During this time of economic recession, we believe public policy discussions surrounding workers and business should focus on keeping jobs in our state and not debating an issue that clearly belongs on the collective bargaining table. Employers and employees deserve the flexibility to decide how leave best works for them. Our policymakers should not prescribe this employee benefit. We urge you to oppose A-873 / S-786.