Warehouse worker 'bill of rights' stalls in Trenton again as lawmakers seek votes

State lawmakers once again failed to advance a bill regulating conditions for warehouse workers and other temporary staff in New Jersey, prompting outrage from immigrant and labor groups who say the employees need more protections.

For the second time in just over a month, the state Senate on Monday failed to come up with the required 21 votes to move the measure through the upper chamber. What supporters call the "temp workers bill of rights" has already passed the state Assembly, and Gov. Phil Murphy has said he'll sign it, if certain modifications are made.

“We don’t have 21 today,” state Sen. Joe Cryan, a Union County Democrat who sponsored the bill, said at the Statehouse in Trenton. He declined to say why the bill didn’t have the votes, or which of his colleagues were holdouts.

Senate President Nicholas Scutari, D-Union, confirmed that he wants to try again with the bill in December, as did Cryan.

“We’ll keep fighting for the bill’s passage,” Cryan said in an interview before the start of the voting session. The Senate is not scheduled to meet again until Dec. 22.

Supporters estimate that the bill would cover 127,000 temporary workers, a group that has grown with the proliferation of warehouses and distribution centers in the state. The legislation requires that temp employees receive the same salary and benefits that workplaces offer to traditional staff, and it would ban agencies from deducting transportation fees and other mandatory charges often imposed on worker paychecks.

Monday marked the fourth attempted vote in the Senate on the measure and the second since Murphy issued a conditional veto of the proposal in September. The legislation was abruptly pulled from the Senate floor last month after Cryan said a lobbying blitz by business was softening up support.

A co-sponsor, Sen. Teresa Ruiz, D-Essex, tested positive for COVID-19 and was not present at Monday's voting session, according to a report by Politico New Jersey, though it’s not clear if Ruiz's presence would have changed the outcome. The state Senate recently ended its policy of letting members with the coronavirus attend sessions remotely, so Ruiz wasn't available to vote.

Murphy proposed several changes to the initial bill, including a sharper definition of what type of employees would be covered. Under his recommendations, that would include food preparation workers and servers, landscapers, personal care workers and those in construction, transportation and warehouse jobs.

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Labor unions and immigrant rights groups backing the bill contend agencies often funnel undocumented immigrants in New Jersey into exploitative and unsafe working conditions.  Several of those groups, including Make the Road New Jersey and New Labor, disrupted Monday's Senate session to protest the bill’s removal from the agenda, before marching out of the chamber.

"Now's not the time to leave temp workers behind," Reynalda Cruz, a former temp worker and current organizer with New Labor, said in a statement. "Not passing this bill is just saying that temp workers are disposable and that business interests are more important than our own humanity as workers.''

The New Jersey Staffing Alliance, a trade group organizing against the bill, didn’t respond to several requests for comment on Monday. Temp agencies in the state have said the regulations would throttle a growing industry that has provided well-paying entry-level jobs to immigrants and other unskilled workers.

The regulations would be "crushing" for "an industry that is vital to New Jersey's economy" said Alexis Bailey, vice president of government affairs for the New Jersey Business and Industry Association.

She took issue with the proposed mandate that temp workers get the same pay and benefits as permanent workers, saying it would be an administrative nightmare that could put regular employees at a disadvantage.

Daniel Munoz covers business, consumer affairs, labor and the economy for NorthJersey.com and The Record. 

Email: munozd@northjersey.com; Twitter: @danielmunoz100

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NJ temp worker bill of rights stalls in state Senate again