A trio of South Jersey legislators pitched a simple but powerful new idea on Tuesday:
Dock the pay of New Jersey Department of Labor employees in the event that long-shuttered unemployment offices remain closed to the public.
–
Senator Michael Testa, Assemblyman Antwan McClellan, and Assemblyman Erik Simonsen, all Republicans representing the First Legislative District, announced their legislative proposal outside of the Cumberland County Unemployment Office in Vineland.
The new bill would require the reopening of unemployment offices for in-person employment no later than March 1st; if locations remains closed, then senior department leaders would face reductions to their pay at a rate of 5% every two weeks.
Access to New Jersey unemployment offices have been shuttered since the beginning of the pandemic and the claims backlog results in massive suffering over the course of months for thousands of Garden State workers. One study concluded that New Jersey was America’s worst state for trying to obtain unemployment assistance by telephone.
Watch below:
