STATE OF NEW JERSEY
220th LEGISLATURE
PRE-FILED FOR INTRODUCTION IN THE 2022 SESSION
Sponsored by:
Assemblywoman BRITNEE N. TIMBERLAKE
District 34 (Essex and Passaic)
Assemblywoman MILA M. JASEY
District 27 (Essex and Morris)
Assemblywoman VERLINA REYNOLDS-JACKSON
District 15 (Hunterdon and Mercer)
Co-Sponsored by:
Assemblyman Mukherji, Assemblywoman Sumter and Assemblyman Atkins
SYNOPSIS
Creates New Jersey Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Act.
CURRENT VERSION OF TEXT
Introduced Pending Technical Review by Legislative Counsel.
An Act concerning the employment rights of domestic workers and amending and supplementing various parts of the statutory law.
Be It Enacted by the Senate and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey:
1. (New section) The Legislature finds and declares that:
a. Domestic workers provide valuable services in industries such as in-home child care, house cleaning, home care, cooking, gardening, and other household occupations.
b. The labor domestic workers provide is an important contribution to the States economy and prosperity, including but not limited to, by providing support services that enable other individuals to participate in the workforce.
c. Many domestic workers are women, immigrants, and persons of color who work in or about private homes, isolated from other workers.
d. Since 2007, the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) has advocated for respect for domestic workers by including them in national, State, and local labor protection laws. NDWA. In September 2020, NDWA affiliates, Adhikaar, Casa Freehold, New Labor and Wind of the Spirit, in collaboration with the Center for Women at Work at Rutgers University, released a report which found low pay, lack of benefits, and rampant wage theft occurs throughout the domestic worker industry, and that there is a lack of enforcement regarding existing rights of domestic workers.
e. At least 10 other states and two cities have enacted legislation to provide rights, benefits, and protections for domestic workers.
f. The Legislature therefore finds that it is in the best interest of the State of New Jersey and its residents to provide rights, benefits, and protections to the countless domestic workers providing valuable services throughout the State.
2. (New section) As used in P.L. , c. (C. ) (pending before the Legislature as this bill):
Casual work means work that is:
(1) irregular, uncertain, or incidental in nature and duration; and
(2) different in nature from the type of paid work in which the worker is customarily engaged.
Domestic services means
services of a household nature and performed by an individual in or about a
private home on a permanent or temporary basis, and includes services performed
by a domestic worker.
"Domestic worker" or worker means hourly and salaried employees, independent contractors, full-time and part-time individuals and temporary individuals and is narrowly construed to mean any worker who:
(1) works for one or more employers; and
(2) is an individual who works in residence for the purposes of providing any of the following services: caring for a child; serving as a companion or caretaker for a sick, convalescing, or elderly person, or a person with a disability; housekeeping or house cleaning; cooking; providing food or butler service; parking cars; cleaning laundry; gardening; personal organizing, or for any other domestic service purpose; provided that the term domestic worker does not include:
(a) A family member, with family member meaning a spouse, child, parent, sibling, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, first cousin, grandparent, grandchild, father-in-law, mother-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, stepparent, stepchild, stepbrother, stepsister, half brother, or half sister, whether the individual is related by blood, marriage, or adoption;
(b) An individual primarily engaged in house sitting, pet sitting, or dog walking;
(c) An individual working at a business operated primarily out of the residence, such as a home day-care business;
(d) An individual whose primary work involves household repair or maintenance, such as a roofer, plumber, mason, painter or other
similar contractor;
(e) A home health care worker while they are paid through public funds, such as a home health care worker while paid through
Medicaid or Medicare;
(f) An individual established as a kinship legal guardian, as defined by section 2. of P.L.2001, c. 250 (C.3B:12A-2), of a child who lives in the residence, or an individual who participates in the Kinship Navigator Program, as authorized by the Department of Children and Families, as a caregiver of a child who lives in the residence and receives services provided by a kinship navigator service provider; or
(g) An individual less than 18 years of age.
"Department" means the Department of Labor and Workforce Development.
Employment agency means any person or entity that procures, or attempts to procure, directly or indirectly through placement in a physical or virtual labor pool:
(1) employees, independent contractors, or domestic workers for employers or companies seeking the services of employees, independent contractors, or domestic workers; and
(2) after the procurement is complete, continues involvement in the terms of exchange of domestic services with the employees, independent contractors, or domestic workers through activities, including, but not limited to:
(a) processing or distributing or withholding workers payment that the workers are owed from hiring entities or clients;
(b) levying fees, fines, or discipline for unsatisfactory worker behavior that happened during an employment, independent contractor engagement, or other job, including the termination of workers;
(c) rating workers on an ongoing basis and publicly sharing those ratings to employers or clients;
(d) adjusting wages or payment based on ratings from employers or clients; or
(e) other forms of continued involvement after procurement that evidence ongoing control.
Hiring entity means any employer, as defined in section 1 of P.L.1965, c.173 (C.34:11-4.1), who employs a domestic worker, and also means any person, firm, business, partnership, association, corporation, limited liability company, or other entity, including referral, employment, and internet based or on-demand platforms, that provides compensation directly or indirectly to a domestic worker for the performance of domestic services and any person or persons acting directly or indirectly in the interest of the employer in relation to the domestic worker.
"Live-in domestic worker" includes any individuals, who, as part of their employment, reside in the personal residence of the hiring entity
"Referral agency" means any person or entity that procures, or attempts to proc