A recent appellate opinion in the case of In the Matter of Ambroise demonstrates that New Jersey civil service employees will receive a fair hearing in appeals with the New Jersey’s Civil Service Commission and appeals courts.
Ambroise was terminated as a senior correctional police officer (SCPO) by the New Jersey Department of Corrections (DOC). The DOC alleged that Ambroise engaged in oral sex with an inmate at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women.
Like the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act, New Jersey’s Wage and Hour Law requires that employers pay non-exempt employees minimum wage for all hours that they work, and overtime (time and a half) when employees work more than forty hours per week. New Jersey’s Wage Payment Law requires that employers pay employees pay all
wages that they are due, and sets forth the timing and procedures for payments and permitted deductions. This is a much-litigated area of New Jersey employment law.
Suits under the New Jersey Wage and Hour Law and Wage Payment Law have long been required to be brought within two years of the violations or they would be time barred. However, in 2019 the New Jersey Legislature amended both laws to extend the time for filing a civil lawsuit for violation of the laws from two to six years. The amendments were silent about whether they would apply retroactively or only going forward. Generally, unless the Legislature provides for retroactive application of new statutes of limitations they apply only prospectively – in other words they normally apply only going forward to acts which occurred after the amendment, not looking backward to what happened before. These amendments were to take effect immediately upon enactment, which occurred on August 6, 2019.
New Jersey employment law in the public sector contains few more contentious areas than the confidentiality of the disciplinary and personnel records of law enforcement officers. A trio of published New Jersey State and Federal court opinions have shed light on this contentious and evolving area of the law.
The Legislature has tasked the New Jersey Attorney General with supervising law enforcement throughout the state. In 2020, in the midst of the George Floyd protests, the New Jersey Attorney General used that authority to issue two directives which would release the names of law enforcement officers who have committed violations resulting in “major discipline,” and to issue summaries of the underlying complaints and discipline imposed. Although the directives apply to all State and local jurisdictions, they define “major discipline” similarly to New Jersey civil service law: suspension of greater than five days, demotion, or termination. The Attorney General’s given reasons for the directives were to “promote trust, transparency and accountability.”
New Jersey employees have significant protections during mass layoffs under New Jersey employment law.
In 1988 the United States Congress passed the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (the “WARN” Act). The Act went into effect in 1989. The purpose of the Act was to try to assist employees with large layoffs or
large plant or factory closures. The Act essentially required advanced notice and other assistance to workers so that they would have time to find other employment.
In December of 2007 New Jersey passed its own Act similar to the federal WARN Act which was officially called the Millville Dallas Airmotive Plant Job Loss Notification Act, but is often just referred to as the New Jersey WARN Act in reference to its federal counterpart.
New Jersey is one of the most employee-friendly states in the nation; and its becoming more and more employee-friendly every year. On February 6, 2023, Governor Murphy signed the Temporary Workers’ Bill of Rights Act into law. This law clarifies and expands employee protections for non-exempt (hourly) employees who work for
temporary staffing agencies.
As a preliminary matter, it is important to note that this Act does not apply to all temporary workers. Indeed, a prior version of the law was vetoed by Governor Murphy who requested a narrower application of the law. As a result, the final law defines “temporary laborers” as those who contract for employment in a “designated classification placement” with a temporary staffing agency. “Designated classification placement” is further defined to include:
Under New Jersey employment law, tenure is an added layer of job protection for certain public school employees.
A Preliminary Notice of Disciplinary Action, also known as a PNDA or a Form 31-A, is a New Jersey Civil Service form which notifies an employee that her employer seeks to impose discipline, including an immediate suspension in some
cases.
Progressive discipline is a concept used in New Jersey civil service discipline law and teacher tenure charges. It can serve to increase or decrease the severity of a penalty based on the employee’s prior disciplinary record. Recently, an appellate opinion examined the concept of
progressive discipline in the context of a civil service discipline appeal in the case of Matter of Stuiso, Bergen County Department of Public Works.
Ronald Stuiso was a maintenance worker for Bergen County. He filled out two repair forms reporting unsafe conditions. He directed another employee, Francesco Azzollinni, to submit the forms. Azzollinni met with Vincent Rothenburger, a department supervisor. Rothenburger raised his voice at Azzollinni, leading Stuiso to intervene and raise his voice at Rothenburger while getting in his face. The two continued yelling until separated by co-workers.
New Jersey employment law affords civil service employees with many due process protections when their employer seeks to impose discipline. The Appellate Division’s recent decision in a civil service discipline appeal in the case of In the Matter of Figueroa, Camden County, Department of Parks examines one of the fundamental principles of these protections – the notice required to be received by the
employee before discipline may be imposed.
Adrian Figueroa, Jr., was a laborer for Camden County, a civil service jurisdiction, for 5 years. He was charged with second-degree sexual assault and spent several days in jail after his arrest. While he was in jail someone, it is unclear who, called and said he was out sick. Eventually the County learned of the charges and served him with preliminary and then final notice of disciplinary action (a “PNDA” and “FNDA,” Forms 31-A and 31-B) suspending him pending the resolution of the charges. They were eventually downgraded and Figueroa pled guilty to harassment, a petty disorderly office.
New Jersey employment law has long been at the forefront of prohibiting discrimination. Indeed, the Legislature adopted New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination in 1945, long before the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 first banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, and even before the President Harry Truman’s Executive Order desegregating the Armed Forces in 1948. The Law
Against Discrimination has been amended many times since then to expand the protections against discrimination in employment, and decisions by New Jersey courts have interpreted the Law to provide much broader protections than those provided by similar Federal statutes such as the Federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (known as the “ADEA”). However, the Law Against Discrimination is not without its flaws. The New Jersey Legislature acted in 2021 to fix one of these flaws by strengthening the protections against age discrimination.
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