UPDATE:
The NJ legislature has passed a law that will activate Guaranteed Severance, which Gov. Murphy signed on January 10, 2023.
For more information, read our press release. Additional updates coming soon!
Since July of 2020 – when New Jersey’s Guaranteed Severance Pay law should have taken effect – over 28,000 people have had their jobs eliminated and could’ve qualified for severance under the new law. Instead, they got nothing while Jersey’s big corporations (who put a lot of people out of work) got paid out millions of our state and federal tax dollars, all because corporate billionaires used COVID as a cover to put our pay protections on pause. This has to end.
Inspired by the historic $20 million dollar severance assistance fund that Toys R Us associates fought for and won in 2018 — New Jersey State Senator Joe Cryan (LD20) teamed up with our committee of essential workers across the state who are leading the movement with United for Respect to improve the lives of people working in retail.
After COVID was declared a pandemic in March of 2020, our state government took swift action to stabilize the local economy. Corporations lobbied to have Guaranteed Severance Pay put on hold as part of that process, and emergency legislation to delay implementation of the law passed in April 2020
Essential workers and their families have been left waiting for two long years. But New Jersey can still be the first state to implement protections of this kind, providing meaningful security in the face of mass layoffs.