Another One-Way Labor Law

N.J. becomes first state to mandate severance for workers if they are part of a mass layoff. So read an article headline in the New Jersey Star-Ledger by Samantha Marcus. She wrote:

The law (S3170) requires that New Jersey employers with at least 100 employees provide their workers 90 days notice — up from 60 — before a large layoff or a plant closing or transfer that will put at least 50 people out of work. It would also force these businesses to pay their workers one week’s severance for every year of service. The payout increases by an additional four weeks if the employer doesn’t comply with the 90-day notification rules.

“When these corporate takeover artists plunge the companies into bankruptcy they walk away with windfall profits and pay top executives huge bonuses, but the little guys get screwed,” state Sen. Joe Cryan, D-Union, who sponsored the bill, said in a statement. “The law will now be upgraded to better protect the rights of the employees. Workers’ performance and workers’ dedication to the company were secondary. Now, hopefully, they’ll be moved more to the forefront.”

I posted these comments:

Gallup reports that Millennials are “the Job-Hopping Generation” who feel “unattached to organizations and institutions” that employ them. The Financial Times reports it’s nothing new—“Job-hopping millennials’ are no worse than their elders.”

With that much quitting, why shouldn’t labor law be a two-way street? If businesses are legally required to give 90 days notice before letting employees go, followed by hefty severance pay, shouldn’t simple fairness put the same requirements on the “little guys?” What about the rights of business owners? What about business performance? What happens when business dedication to its workers becomes secondary to the worker who quits for better job opportunities?

Many more workers quit than are fired. Gallup shows that 45-60% of workers “are open to a different job opportunity” and 21-36% “will look for a job with a different organization in the next 12 months.” In other words, many more businesses “get screwed” by “little guys” than “little guys get screwed” by businesses. So why does the new law only apply to business? Shouldn’t the basic American principle of Equal Protection of the Law impose the same obligation on the worker?

For the record, I oppose these types of labor laws, unless they involve fraud, breach-of-contract, and like criminal activity. Never mind that the law applies only to “mass layoffs.” To any individual worker, a layoff is a layoff. If we’re going to have these laws, it should be applied fairly.

Related Reading:

If We’re to Have Labor Laws, Should They Work Both Ways?

"Greed" is a Two-Way Street