Sue Livio | August 22, 2022 | NJ Advance Media |
Companies that acquire nursing homes and other health care facilities in New Jersey must preserve employee salaries and benefits for a minimum of four months under a bill Gov. Phil Murphy signed into law Thursday.
The COVID-19 pandemic has claimed the lives of at least 8,700 nursing home and assisted living residents and 139 employees in the state. It has also decimated the industry’s bottom line, prompting some owners to sell. The outcome has been bad for some employees, who have seen their wages and benefits trimmed or eliminated after these properties change hands, according to unions leaders who lobbied for the bill (S315).
Nursing home and hospital executives argued the measure would interfere with their business and ultimately lead to job losses if new owners can’t make money. They persuaded the leaders in the state Assembly to kill the bill in the last legislative session that ended in January.
The sponsors reintroduced the bill in the new session later that month, and eventually scaled it back, offering four months of wage and benefit instead of six months in the earlier version.
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