Morristown New Jersey Employment Law Blog

Regular readers of our Morristown Employment Law Blog will undoubtedly recall that we recently took a look back at the big changes 2019 brought to New Jersey law. We looked at a couple of topics: penalties for wage violations and changes to the state’s Family Leave Act.

In this post, we will examine employment law changes that include protections for medical marijuana users and the reworking of non-disclosure agreements.

Former Fox News personalities Gretchen Carlson and Julie Roginsky have formed a national advocacy group called Lift Our Voices. The group says its aim is to stop companies from using nondisclosure agreements to prevent victims of improper workplace behavior from speaking out.

The group says it wants states to pass proposals patterned after the New Jersey employment law that makes provisions of NDAs unenforceable in cases in which an employee alleges workplace discrimination, harassment or retaliation.

It is important for many employers to hire independent contractors who can perform essential tasks at a lower overall cost than full-time employees with benefits. A bill recently introduced in the New Jersey legislature would create a stricter ABC test for determining who is and who is not a contractor.

The bill would make changes to a number of New Jersey employment laws, including the Wage and Hour Law, unemployment law and Wage Payment Law.

Regular readers of our Morristown employment law blog know that New Jersey’s recent expansion of its wage and hour laws has made it easier for both regulators and workers to level a wide variety of charges against employers. We read recently that state labor auditors are investigating whether ride-sharing companies Uber and Lyft are misclassifying workers as independent contractors.

If the Department of Labor and Workforce Development determines that drivers are actually employees and not independent contractors, the companies would face a raft of possible sanctions and changes to pay, hours and more.