EANJ's Annual Meeting will Focus on What's on the Horizon

Jun 2008

(Livingston, June 2008) When the so-called paid family leave bill passed the Senate and was heading to Governor Corzine’s desk for signature, it culminated a decade of efforts by labor and other activities to provide family leave insurance as a basic benefit to workers.  To John Sarno, president of the Employers Association on New Jersey (EANJ), the new insurance law is a piece of a bigger legal puzzle for employers in the state.
 
“The federal and state legislation on the horizon will have the biggest impact on the workplace in a generation,” says Sarno. “Employers, small and large will need to understand new rules and regulations, as management grows more complex.”
 
Already this year, New Jersey has seen a new religious discrimination law, a plant closing and severance law, new regulations implementing the state’s family leave law, a military leave law and an updated directive on independent contractors.

The federal government has been just as busy, amending the medical leave law, issuing new guidance relating to employees who are caregivers, issuing new immigration rules, and enacting a genetic information discrimination law.  And there are rafts of other proposals that are gaining momentum, including major overhauls of the nation’s immigration and health care laws.
 
Sarno believes that the cumulative impact of these new laws and regulations will change the workplace dramatically. EANJ’s 92nd Annual Meeting on June 20th will provide a special legal briefing on what to expect for next year and beyond.
 
In addition to a briefing on family leave insurance, the meeting will address proposals to bring universal health care to New Jersey, a bill to make union organizing easier and proposals to amend the Americans with Disabilities Act.
 
Sarno believes that mistakes made by employers that have gone unnoticed in the past are now vulnerable to government scrutiny and litigation.

“Many smaller employers really have no idea that this legislative activity creates a totally different environment for them.  In the past, some employers simply paid the fines as a cost of doing business.  I think that the penalties for non-compliance will get a little harsher and the defense of not knowing or understanding the law a little less available,” he says.