Budget, paid family leave, don't add up for Turner right now

Way to go Shirley!

Let's fix one morass before we pile more variables into it and make things worse. Many people have been stretched to their limits. The paid family leave bill would better serve the middle to upper-middle class who can afford to go out on 2/3rds pay for 6 weeks. Let's have California and Washington feel the pain of their mistakes with their versions of this plan and then we can implement the best plan based from them. Why be bleeding edge when we can learn from other state's best practices?

There are a bunch of other concerns about the paid family leave bill that I posted in another article (squeaker) the other day.

The first thing would be a full and independent state audit, but those in power refuse to let that occur. How can we claim there is no waste unless there is an audit to back it up? Money can be shifted from one cost center to another. It's been over 25 years since a real audit had been performed. Tell me things don't get messed up in 25 years!

It's not the core state workers - it's the contract awards, the partonage jobs, the consulting jobs that probably go to politically connected employment agencies, departmental waste so one department can keep their next year's budget the same or make it greater. It's these bogus bills and laws that keep getting passed. There should be a moratorium on any bill that would involve any type of new spending. If it doesn't cut costs - delay it for a year!

It's so easy to pick on the little guy who does the essential work in the state. Everyone is lumping them in with the rest of the woodpile.

Where's the $8 Billion from the SCC? If a kid swipes a pack of gum, he goes into the system. Lose $8B and everyone looks the other way.

She has a lot of nerve speaking about protecting the families of workers during the budget battle when at the same time WHEN SHE CAN DO SOMETHING POSITIVE FOR FAMILIES she turns her back.  

Why is Shirley Turner now Anti-Family ? Why has she become a conservative Republican State Senator? Is she smiling in that picture because she made a deal to stab working families in the back?

SHAME ON YOU STATE SENATOR "TURN YOUR BACK"  

This proves once again what a dinosaur she is!

Her reasons for not supporting family leave are total BS.  firstamend hit the nail on the head - she's pissed off at leadership for not moving the bill when her name was on it.  Think it's time Turn 'er back moved into a retirement community!

To pro-Business, anti-family people this Bill will always be a bad idea. Good times, Bad times , it makes no difference. You do not like the bill because YOU can not dictate to your employee that they must work for you and not take care of a family member in need.

All of your rhetoric has still not proven how this will hurt the bottom line of a businees. YOU KNOW WHY? Because it will not hurt the bottom line of a business . You know that  and I know that.

Thisis a good pro-family Bill. Get on Board and stop putting the almighty dollar ahead of everything in your life.

I’ve seen in past posts here an on nj.com that you are a state worker, which I’ll all behind you guys. I’m a single parent technical employee who pays for a part-time residential employer. I have several attorneys and an accountant in my family and we have actually read this bill and calculated the cost impacts. What I say is not rhetoric, as I am learned and actually read  the bill I speak about.

This will impact me several hundred dollars more per year in direct costs, for just one part-time, $200/week employee. Then there is the approximate $200 - $300 in accounting fees that will also be levied against me for payroll processing. If my sitter takes an event, my contribution rates will skyrocket, as my fund will now be in the red. If this impacts me, it will also impact other employers as well.

So for me, a single parent of four young children, my yearly expenses will rise by at least $500. This takes money directly from my family and me. Unfortunately, I do have to work and childcare needs necessitate a babysitter.

If this plan were completely independent, I would be all for it. It isn’t though.

 What’s worse is that the legislature and lobby groups want to ram this bill into law, when two other states are just beginning to pilot the program and are already experiencing problems with it. A prudent company waits to see how other firms handle new initiatives before jumping into them. Why can’t New Jersey learn from other state’s mistakes and do this thing right the first time. Why do we have to spend millions to correct errors, and thereby forcing the businesses to change what they are doing again? This causes a ripple effect through the state – and yes, we all pay for it one way or another.

FirstAmend, you state that "New Jersey at least tries to take care of people. Sure it costs money but I will pay those taxes because I want to live in a state that helps those who can't always help themselves."  This is pure socialism.  Until the advent of FDR's socialist programs, America had been a nation where people took care of themselves because they had no incetive to do otherwise.  From the time of our nation's founding, when poor English and Dutch settlers came, through the 1920s, when poor Italian peasants came, people saw America as a land of opportunity.  Germans in the 1850s and 60s, Irish in the 1870s and 80s and the Italians from the 1890s through 1924 were the heaviest groups of immigrants who arrived and all moved up from peasantry to the middle class in a generation or two.  Even today, many immigrants of Central American, African and Caribbean heritage are moving into the middle classes simply by working hard.

We need to cut the taxes and let the churches help the poor.  When taxes are cut and people have more money, they give to charity in high numbers.  That's another thing that has made America great, the spirit of giving.  Government has taken that spirit away because they think they can do it better.  But, I ask you, when does government ever complete any project on-time and under budget?

I hope this bill does not pass.  The government takes enough money out of my weekly paycheck!  I'll give the $66 that this program is said to cost each couple annually and give it to my church.

"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." - Thomas Jefferson

Is that supposed to be a big deal. Who cares. People like you are only worried about one thing, MONEY ,MONEY MONEY.

MAYBE IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO LOOK AT THAT AMERICAN FLAG AND REALIZE THAT THE STRENGTH OF THAT FLAG WAS BUILT ON THE SANCTITY OF THE FAMILY.

Hurt the Family, you hurt the flag!

Support Families! Support Paid Family Leave!

This won't make America better.  It will put home health aides out of work.  It will delight the class of slackers who will take advantage of it.  It will put another chip in the payroll of strapped workers.  It is socialist.  It will grow and need more funds like other programs, adding to the debt of a fiscally messed up state.  People who support it are only looking at the surface.  They are compassionate but short sighted.

With thousands of hits per week, 15 thousand printed bumper stickers and massive electronically downloaded bumper sticker images already - I think they will soon get the message.

Some responding have a vested interest in this plan passing - they'll probably be the first in line to abuse (oops. I meant 'use') it.  You see, with certain mindsets, we're the evil family hating business owners. (Even though I am extremely liberal with paid personal days and paid emergency days off. I can afford to give time off, as it doesn't cut into my salary budget. However, I'm not going to absorb any additional costs for this plan.) I must assume it will be used by the employees and count it as an added benefit for them - coming off of their future pay raises.

Perhaps I'll BE AMERICAN and shift some of the labor off-shore like many of my counterparts. This will help a family, probably ones who are worse of than American families. It will sure help me stay competitive and eliminate most of the regulatory burdens and costs. Hmmm.

It stinks but there's only so much money to go around. The economy is starting to tank and some employers will reduce staff and make the employees work more to keep the budget in line. When someone takes off, they will have to work that much harder. The employees will have to take it because the job market is becoming extremely unstable right now. We'll see how good it is for the family when the employees come home dog tired instead of having energy left to enjoy the rest of the day. Be careful of what you guys ask for - you just might get it.

This is a really bad time to do this kind of thing.

I agree . Turner has another agenda here. She is a bitter person who has turned spiteful. You listen to her speak and you listen to her logic and she makes little sense.

In simple words she is a phony. She dislikes this Bill because she is jealous of the people who are sponsering the Bill. HELL, SHE BROUGHT THE IDEA UP TEN YEARS AGO BUT IT NEVER WENT ANYWHERE.

You know what is wrong with Trenton. It is the Shirley Turners' who hang on too long and only sit back and are criticaL of others who are DOING THINGS.  

She also feels that because she has been there for so long that she can't be questioned. WRONG!

The poor people in her District are saddled with a " mad at the world" Senator who has no ideas of her own.

We are being pro-family and pro-American. That is why we are hanging in here trying to make a go in New Jersey. Pennsylvania is just 15 miles away. The only differences for my commute are the bridge tolls, plus the nicer architecture of the houses, as I would surely move there if I relocated.

My brother-in-law is a project manager for a large publicly-traded company and several projects are trialing offshore labor. He has been reporting extremely good results – though the time difference means that some of the phone calls he gets are late at night. He’s got well over 100 contractors in India working on his projects. The numbers, productivity results, elimination of administration overhead are all strong factors to utilize this type of workforce. An instant reduction of over 70% in labor costs – and that’s factoring in all other types of overhead. These are substantial numbers that cannot be ignored. What would be the business impact if just 20-30 New Jersey employees were furloughed and those jobs were shipped offshore?

So by saying that we are not pro-family and pro-American is purely bogus. We are trying to keep things local and domestic. We are trying to keep Americans and New Jerseyans employed. It’s just that the government doesn’t want to help make things easy on us.

It stinks that you had to close-up shop in your small business. Perhaps there are different business dynamics in place? In a non-growth business, the only way to recover money is by streamlining costs – until you can’t do it anymore. Depending on your business, that would mean letting people go. Well, the economy is starting to tank, if relief isn’t offered soon – many will reevaluate their alternate business options.

Many business folks are starting to get that “Oh Well” attitude. It’s the resignation that no matter how hard you fight things are not going to get better. When that happens, drastic changes result because small changes don’t show any results. It’s these drastic changes that force companies to relocate or offshore labor.

Remember, we’re in a global economy now. When we buy stuff at Target and Wal-Mart – most of those goods are not made of domestic content. I try to shop US content as much as possible, but this is becoming harder to do every day. Many people will buy foreign content because it is so much cheaper that American made goods. With limited incomes, this becomes more of a factor. Just like people shop at Target because they offer reasonable prices, many countries have been college educating their workforces over the past 10 years and offer competitive or more advanced skilled labor cheaper. The more demands and requirements labor places on business, the more the disparity between workforces gets tilted so that a decision to move cannot be ignored.

If I sit down here and think of what the benefits of working in New Jersey are as opposed to PA, DE or employing offshore labor, I can't think of any real reasons to stay - other than it was where I was raised. My brother lives in southern NY, just over the NJ border, and my sister lives in eastern PA.

 You talk about business protecting labor – where’s labor trying to protect their jobs!