New Jersey Employment Lawyers

New Jersey’s State Policy Prohibiting Discrimination in the Workplace is considered amongst many New Jersey employment lawyers as being one of the least protective of employee rights in the entire country. Unfortunately, the newest revisions proposed by the Civil Service Commission do not provide any meaningful improvement for State employees governed under the State’s anti-harassment policy, and particularly with respect to how it conducts investigations of claims of sexual harassment. In fact, when it comes to New Jersey’s controversial “strict confidentiality directive” policy, the proposed changes make the New Jersey’s anti-harassment policy even worse for victims of sexual harassment and discrimination.

Much has been written over the past week regarding the Civil Service Commission’s attempts to strengthen the strict confidentiality directive. While the Civil Service Commission’s proposed revisions could worsen the penalties for breach, the current version of the strict confidentiality directive in effect continues to require incidents of sexual harassment from the public. What many of the news reports seem to have missed is the devastating impact of the current strict confidentiality policy has and continues to have on silencing victims of sexual harassment.

The current strict confidentiality directive in place expressly threatens state employees with discipline up to and including termination if the state employee exercises his or her constitutionally protected right to speak out about allegations of harassment within the state workplace. A state employee who makes a complaint of harassment or discrimination, or is requested to participate in a discrimination or harassment investigation, is required under current state regulations and practice to keep all aspects of the investigation confidential. This means, for example, that if a state employee is the victim of sexual assault or harassment at her state job and she complains about it to the State’s EEO/AA office, she is forbidden under current regulations and practice to tell a lawyer, a co-worker or even her spouse anything about what happened. The strict confidential directive remains in place and every state employee must abide by it or be subject to discipline. N.J.A.C. 4A:7-3.1(j), states:

The New Jersey Supreme Court will soon decide whether someone who leaves a job for another job that never commences will still be eligible for unemployment benefits.

Under New Jersey Unemployment Benefits law, an individual is disqualified for unemployment benefits if he or she has left work voluntarily without good cause attributable to the work. N.J.S.A. 43:21-5(a). In 2015, due to increased political pressure to fix what was commonly referred to as the “Black Hole” of New Jersey unemployment law, the New Jersey legislature specifically amended N.J.S.A. 43:21-5(a) to assure that employees are no longer found to be ineligible for leaving one job for an equal or better job, but lose the subsequent job prior to the expiration of the 8 week employment requirement. Specifically, the Legislature stated that there will not be a disqualification if the individual “voluntarily leaves work with one employer to accept from another employer employment which commences not more than seven days after the individual leaves employment with the first employer, if the employment with the second employer has weekly hours or pay not less than the hours or pay of the employment of the first employer, except that if the individual gives notice to the first employer that the individual will leave employment on a specified date and the first employer terminated the individuals before that date, the seven-day period will commence from the specified date.”

But what happens if the new job is rescinded, due to no fault of the employee, before the employee ever starts his or her first day of work? This is exactly what happened in the case entitled McClain v Board of Review. Patricia McClain had been a teacher at the Learning Edge Academy, in Galloway Township. On Oct. 12, 2015, she accepted an offer to teach at another school, in Egg Harbor, to start within seven days after she left her former employer. Unfortunately, a day after McClain quit her job at the Learning Edge, her job offer at Kids Choice was rescinded. As it turned out, the teacher she was supposed to replace, returned to the school, thus eliminating the need for the new position, and a new job for Ms. McClain. Ms. McClain, now finding herself unemployed, applied for unemployment benefits, for which she was denied by the State Department of Labor’s Board of Review.

Articles Posted in New Jersey Employment Lawyers

New Jersey’s Strict Confidentiality Directive Continues to Silence Victims of Sexual Harassment

Unemployment Benefits for Job Switchers-the New Jersey Supreme Court Will Now Weigh In