NJ Temporary Workers Bill of "Rights" - NJSA 34:8D-1 - D-1

Thomas Ritter (00:00.338)
It reads like sabotage more than it reads like protecting the workers. It literally reads like you're sabotaging their jobs. Welcome to this Bridgestone Beacon bonus episode about New Jersey Law S-511, the temporary workers bill of rights. Today we're here with Fred Amacuchi. Fred Amacuchi is the vice president of sales and marketing for Data Screening.

a background check and pre-employment screening company. Fred is also a board member of the New Jersey Staffing Alliance. Let us know a little bit about what Selfie background check is or data screening. Let us know a little about your business. Data screening, we do background checks, pre-employment for companies around the world. We've been in business for over 30 years. We're accredited. In our industry, the big important piece is you want to find a background check company that's accredited.

No one really kind of polices the background check industry. It's basically policed by litigation. So there's the Professional Background Screening Association, which is made up of all background check companies. They got together and they wanted to kind of set themselves aside from, like, the bad players of all background check companies. This was, I guess they got together, I don't know, 15 years ago.

and you have to go through an accreditation process as a background check company to become accredited. And that means going through an audit. That means someone comes to your office, asks your employees questions. You have to show your records. You have to give examples of how you sign companies up. You have to show how you get the records. You show that you go to the courthouses. You have court researchers. You do background checks on your employees. A lot of stuff. And that's really what sets aside the background check companies. And there's only about

9% of all background check companies in the United States that are accredited. So when I talk to people, I say, look, even if you're not going forward with us, please at least look into going with a background check company that's accredited. That doesn't mean they're doing everything right, but it at least means they went through the accreditation process, they have the resources and the means to be doing everything right. That's my first spiel. The second part...

Thomas Ritter (02:23.294)
What's an example of doing it right versus doing it wrong? I know you mentioned like actual feet on the street. Is that not typical for people to have actual people in courthouses doing research or in at clerk offices and so forth, pulling records? Technology's a big part of it. There's technology out there that it can pull records from the courthouses, which they allow you to do. Now, some of these courthouses.

do not update their information. Just they don't have the time, the resources, they may not update it for online purposes. So if you have a background check company that says, we could get unlimited amount of county court records for you, they're most likely relying on their technology and knowing that a lot of these courthouses don't have the resources and technology to submit their records.

to this type of system, you know the background check company isn't getting complete records for you. They may, some background check companies haven't been in business that long, they may not even know that. They may not even know that not all counties submit, or even the state courthouses submit all their records to any type of national database list. And you'll get some, I guess it happens in a industry, you'll get some background check companies, or maybe the salespeople who work for the companies.

They'll promise clients, oh, we could do a whole national issue covering the whole United States. And, you know, red flags are really low pricing, really quick times. If they say they're getting you the court records in, you know, hours or minutes, they're lying. That's basically it. So, a lot of these courthouses who don't have the means or the resources, you literally have to go in person.

to retrieve court records. A lot of background check companies utilize court researchers. That's the common process, common practice. So if you're getting, and this goes for county court searches, county criminal court records. So if a background check company promises you to get these records either on an unlimited manner, like say they,

Thomas Ritter (04:48.034)
They say you can have as many counties as you want. Just like a bulk package. Yeah, yeah. It sounds like that's only electronic. Yeah, and a set price. That's another thing. If they give you a set price, think about it. I mean, you've got to pay these court researchers money to go there. And if they're giving you a set price, they're either losing money on you in most cases, or they're lying. They're doing electronic means. The other thing is a lot of these background check companies.

Now we do hundreds and millions of background checks. They will develop their own database of all these records. So that way when they have to look for someone, they utilize their own database. Essentially that work is done for free. So when you see that they're promising you a background checks for a very low cost, they're not getting live data. They're not going directly to the source. They're using their old data that they previously used. I had a situation where a company, there was a lawsuit actually.

The girl was applying for a job, the company did a background check. They used XYZ background check company. The background check company used their own data and reported a record. The girl had, I don't know, it was like five years ago. Within the seven year scope, commonly the seven year scope is the key within background checks, most commonly done. So it turns out the girl. Since the conviction occurred, she actually had that

conviction expunged so if the background check company would have went directly to the source I think was in South Carolina and Check their records that record would not come up because the court expunged it. It's gone and the background check company reported it which they shouldn't have and She lost the job. She didn't get the job if The background check company went to the source the courthouse and checked it live in that lifetime

they wouldn't have reported it. So that's another thing that background check companies do to cut costs, save money, provide cheaper alternatives for some of these companies. They're not doing it the right way. Yeah. That was my understanding was that if you don't have a real human research arm to your background check, that it's

Thomas Ritter (07:17.25)
kind of just electronic self-serve, like, and definitely not up to date. Definitely not up to date. It's not always the background check companies fault. It may be their lack of industry knowledge, lack of expertise or experience because every court, every county court will say they have electronic record system. But what a lot of these

background check companies may not know is they don't update the records in real time. So if you go to one county and you say, oh, you go and try to get their electronic records, they'll have it. They'll give it to you. But it may be from two months ago and you're not getting live data. So you have to know which counties you have to test. We do a lot of testing to make sure that.

the records are accurate and that's part of the accreditation as well. You have to go through this audit process, make sure your who you're using, the court researchers are accurate and that's some of the things that we do all the time.

Thomas Ritter (08:31.242)
Fascinating. People don't know this stuff. I mean, how would you know this stuff? There's another court case that was, I think it was just settled about six months ago. It was, I don't know about you, you ever get these things online where you could go online and say, look up anyone you want, free background check on them or. Oh yeah. Right? Yeah. You could do that. It's basically a data company that extracts.

online data wherever they could get it from and they give it to you. It was ironic because in all these companies that got sued and had to pay out on their websites, they claim we are not a background check company as defined by the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the FCRA. So this is all over their website because they don't want the responsibility and the legal things that they're supposed to be doing as a... They don't want...

They don't want a company to use them for employment screening. Yep. They don't want IBM using them for employment screening and suing them for a billion dollars. Exactly. They say this is not for employment purposes. You're not permitted to use it for this, blah, right? But they were paying marketing companies to have them come up when someone would type in pre-employment background checks or employment background checks. They would pay marketing companies to...

pop up and people would start using them and that's why the federal government sued them and they had to pay. So

That's pretty interesting. I, um,

Thomas Ritter (10:21.246)
It's wild. I bet people think that's like a really regimented. It's part of the, you know, it's part of law. It's your record. I'll bet people think that's like snap, update. Everybody's in line and it's, it's got a very human element to it in all these different municipalities, county level, state level.

And I guess the more you go up the food chain, it probably gets more systemized. Like I'm guessing a small township has their challenges. Um, New York city has their challenges. New York state has their challenges and then nationwide, whatever databases are available, had their own challenges based on the fact that everybody beneath them in the food chain is sort of doing it at on their own schedule, as far as getting data updated. That's wild. Yeah.

The overall thought when you think about this, it's because not all these courts don't talk to each other. So you can't share the record. Some of them do. There's actually nine states in which all their counties are essentially connected. They make it mandatory for all their counties to update instantly. It's, you know, update instantly all their records to their statewide database. So you could pull a...

you could do a statewide criminal search and it will count for all the counties in that state. There's only nine counties that do that, excuse me, nine states. But then you have some counties that they don't even have, like when you go as a court researcher, you go, the process is you go to a county courthouse, they have like kiosks set up and these court researchers can look up these records themselves. It's directly connected to their, you know, the office itself, the court.

Some of these counties, they don't have that. You literally have to go to a front desk and say to the clerk who's behind the desk, hey, I've John Smith. Here's his birthday is what I'm looking for. They look through their system. If they have, say, nine or 10 John Smiths, they'll say, okay, come back tomorrow, I may have something for you. That's what in our industry we call clerk assisted. That's why sometimes a lot of these background checks take a little bit longer than others.

Thomas Ritter (12:39.082)
It's not necessarily the background check company taking a long time. It's the source of the records being searched. It's very, it's very different than like what I as an uneducated consumer would have pictured. But it's just like some database you type it in, if it comes up, you have a record, if it doesn't, you don't. Right. It's like, that's what I thought when I started in this business. But, and then you have all the employment laws too. You like a lot of stuff you cannot report.

based upon the state. Some of these background check companies don't know the state laws. They just report wherever they get. And then lawsuits occur. Lawsuit. So today we're discussing interesting piece of legislation that by all accounts and will have a profound effect, particularly on industries where there's temporary staffing. What we're about to discuss does not currently apply to agriculture.

or temporary workers in agriculture, but it is precedent if anybody wants to apply it to agriculture. So we're discussing New Jersey law S-511. This is a piece of legislation that was signed, I want to say last year, summer to go into effect in August or September. And it's sort of represented as a workers' bill of rights.

We're fighting for the workers here. We're fighting for the little guy. We're going to make sure these temporary workers get taken care of. I guess that's a place to start. Fred is, can you give just a quick background or like, what were the problems? Like just describe why this bill needed to happen. Quote unquote. Um, so I, I assumed the lawmakers, their idea was to stop, like you said, some of the, you know, poor players in this industry. So staffing.

you know, it's, it's when we say staffing, I refer to like temporary staffing, you know, basically, there's also permanent staffing, but this really applies to more temporary staffing. So I'd say a typical situation, maybe, you know, big company factory or something, they need a, they have a project or maybe it's Christmas time, something where they need extra help. And they'll come to a staffing company for that need and staffing company will oblige by having some of their workers go to this

Thomas Ritter (15:05.026)
factory or company and maybe the job will be You know, I don't know six eight weeks or something like that. Now some of the bad players they Will do a similar thing, but maybe they Don't don't pay the workers accordingly. They don't tell the workers where they're going When they take their workers to the job, maybe there's not a work enough work that day for that job So then they leave them or they take them back

and don't tell them anything about what happened. So some of these things are how some poor players in the industry work. That's not to say, you know, and most of them don't do that. So I think what the lawmakers, I don't know if they were getting complaints about this. I imagine they were, and that's why they're like, this isn't right. So they, you know, the thought process was to fix it, you know, help people.

and

But the companies who are operating that way, and the companies that are not above board, what's the difference on paper between them and a company that is above board? Like somebody who's a member of the staffing alliance, somebody who's in good standing, and you've got a better business bureau, and chamber of commerce, and upstanding business in the community. What's the, on paper, what's the difference? Is there an official seal of approval that you can look for when you're...

in the field and you know who's a legit staffing company for temporary services and who's not legit? Just like any business, you want to see if they're registered as a staffing company in the state. That's one of the ways. Now the people who are taking these jobs, it's not exactly, you know, high executive level positions. So they're just looking for work to actually check out these staffing companies to see if they're registered, if they have good benefits.

Thomas Ritter (17:03.258)
if all their jobs are on paper and they're handed a piece of paper. I don't think... Well, I don't think they have a reason. It's probably if they wanted to do a Google but they have no reason to suspect there's an issue. Yeah. And you keep overriding them with employment. So initially you think, oh wow, this is great. They're helping me out. They're giving me employment. Not realizing that they don't have their main concern in their head, the employer.

And so essentially what you described is a classic sort of fly by night situation, like somebody who's just not dotting their eyes, not crossing their T's, not representing the industry will raise red flags and probably get complaints. So then the New Jersey legislature jumps in to address this problem with these bad actors. How?

Thomas Ritter (17:58.69)
by making more laws, essentially. And that's how this came up. They're making more laws. And my thought is, I guess it's hard to stop these specific bad players who are the bad temporary staffing companies because the complaints have to come from the workers. And I don't think the workers have the resources or they really wanna say anything. They just move on, I think.

I don't know how the lawmakers are getting these complaints. Some activist groups possibly would, you know, which in a sense are great. But, but then the unions are out there beating the bushes too. I mean, it would, the unions probably have a, a kiosk available if you'd like to complain about temporary staffing right now, because the unions are the ones who drove this bill, you know.

into the laps of certain senators and those certain senators seem to have rubber stamped it without a lot of thought as to what it does to everybody who's acting in good faith in the industry because essentially that's who's being regulated. So they're trying to fix the problem of people who don't follow today's rules already by making more rules that are going to basically

are already following the rules and it probably won't have a tremendous effect on bad actors because I mean bad actors act bad. Yeah, no matter what. Yeah I don't know. So I don't understand how this fixes the problem. What this seems to do is throttle everybody who's actually operating in good faith. And the weird, the offensive part when it was introduced to me was that it's how it's framed as

It's all about workers bill of rights, protecting the little guy. And you won't. It seems like it seems like it's a cut off your nose to spite your face situation. This bill says you have to pay that temporary worker to be fair to them. By the way, this is how they frame it. You have to pay them as much as you pay the people in that role full time. And if you're not offering this temporary worker, any type of benefits package, this the same pay.

Thomas Ritter (20:22.642)
And now some 10 benefits package, even if they're just there for two, three weeks. So what they're really telling the employer is we don't want you hiring anyone temporary because we just eliminated every reason for you to hire someone temporary. You never pay a temporary worker the same as your seasoned year round people in that position. The idea that the state of New Jersey thinks that it's a good idea to promise a temporary worker.

who's going to come in for a seasonal position for a couple of weeks, a couple of months, the same as you pay the person who is the best in that department full-time, and then you have to cut the temporary worker a second check to be equal to whatever benefits that full-time worker would have made during that same period of time. The employer or the staffing client now asks, do you choose whether, you know, are you just, you know, not going to do temporary staffing?

Or the permanent employee is going to say, well, my gosh, he's getting paid the same amount. He doesn't have to commit to working every day. Why don't I do that? If I want to take a two-month vacation, I could do that. You think how this is going to affect the industry, how it may affect New Jersey, a lot of these huge factories. The other part of the bill is the transportation.

the staffing company cannot charge the temporary worker for transportation. And for a lot of these temporary workers, that's the only means they have to get to their job. A lot of these big factories, a lot of these big companies, they're in the middle of New Jersey. There's no buses, there's no trains or anything like that, no ukers. So the only way these temporary workers can get to those locations is through the transportation that the staffing company provides.

and the staff in the company charges them. It's a nominal amount for each person. And so they're not allowed to do that anymore according to this law. So then the temporary worker's not gonna have a way to get to the job. So that also creates an issue. And I think the repercussion of that is that these temporary workers aren't gonna be able to work at a lot of these jobs. So it's gonna affect them. And then it's also gonna affect the clients of the staffing.

Thomas Ritter (22:47.182)
companies because they're not going to be able to get the temporary help that they need. Do you understand what a temporary worker is? Does the New Jersey State Senate have any clue what the definition of these words even mean when they write this bill? Why are they even talking about commensurate value for benefits for a two or three or week or two or three month temporary

difference between a permanent worker and a temporary worker. Like it's just baffling to me how ignorant the language used by the senators in the state of New Jersey to write a bill to essentially sabotage temporary work and the entry level workers across a number of industries who really need those jobs and really need that transportation. Like it can't be an accident from my perspective.

But I just thought of something when you just mentioned the benefits. You know, when you take a permanent job, you don't get benefits right away, right? Does it take 90 days usually? You know, when you commit to a permanent job, it's almost like you're a temporary worker until those 90 days are up. But yet, a clearly identified temporary worker is going to get those benefits immediately.

Here's a scenario. Let's say you have a permanent worker just starting. He's brand new first week, permanent worker. The company hires a temporary worker. So that temporary worker is gonna essentially receive more than that permanent worker because the temporary worker is gonna receive the benefits or an equivalent amount in cash to those benefits, whereas the permanent worker's not.

It's like, oh wow, that's weird. Because they're saying any temporary worker who shows up out of the blue to have a cup of coffee with your company and do a little work is worth every penny that you are. And you mentioned a few minutes ago, if you're a permanent worker, you'd be like, I had the best job in this place two months ago. Now everybody's got the same as me and they don't have to be here.

Thomas Ritter (25:08.29)
And it seems as though the people who wrote the bill just have no clear comprehension of what temporary means. It reads like sabotage more than it reads like protecting the workers. It literally reads like you're sabotaging their jobs in the bill. But when you read the headline of the bill it's like protecting your protecting the worker. Then you read through and it's like oh we're going to make sure you have no transportation. We're going to make sure it's completely inefficient to hire you and we're going to make sure that your very presence

on a job site is going to piss off the best workers who are there permanently. Like, it's a disaster. Yeah, you're right. Because it's, yeah, I mean, it sounds great and I get where they were going with trying to help some of these people. But I think the focus is just not really correct because we touched upon it.

I think the focus should be more on, I mean, why are you going to create more laws to try to deter the bad players? I mean, like you said, they're not abiding by the laws originally. So what is more laws going to do? And I talked to a lot of these temporary staffing companies. There's a lot more things in the bill. For example, you have to clearly state the job that they're performing, where it will be.

talk to a lot of these staffing companies, they're already doing that. They give these assignments to these workers on paper. And it's very clear. So it was like, well, we're already doing that. Why is this in the law? Because I think maybe the lawmakers don't know what somebody's staffing companies registered the good players are actually doing so that they're not acting like the bad players. So I think we got to go after the bad players instead of just making more rules, like you said, more rules because it's not going to affect bad players.

only effect the people who are doing it right. And staffing companies, they employ a ton, a ton, a ton of people. And a lot of temporary staffing workers, they like that freedom. They like not having to commit to a full-time job. And like you said, that's the purpose of the temporary work. Here's one other thing. We're talking about the benefits and how the pay must match.

Thomas Ritter (27:34.15)
Another thing you don't really think about is if you're a temporary staffing company and you have a client that's you know warehouse or manufacturer and You're supposed to pay your workers same amount as your clients workers. So how you gonna find that information out? Are you have to now go to your client and ask them what? Those workers are being paid because you have to match that that's gonna be odd conversation. I don't know how many

Clients are gonna agree to that and then of course the client is gonna have to also give the staffing company information about the person's benefits and I don't know if that's allowable. Is that legal? Oh, yes, so the staffing companies now goes so this is just paperwork We haven't even thought of so now you have to go find out what the benefits are You got you have to go and you got a

And so these companies hiring temporary workers now have to share what they pay everybody out publicly. How are you going to find out? That's ridiculous. That's never going to happen. So this bill is really, this bill is a poison pill. This is not a bill that was designed in good faith. This is a bill that's designed to sabotage an industry. Clearly, this bill destroys. I mean, I. Fred, nobody's going to do that. You know, maybe originally.

was, you know, the thought was to help people and maybe just kind of they didn't think of some of these consequences. You'd like to think so. It's hard for somebody to read that and think that they started out with a good idea because it's when you go through all the ways it's it sabotages the hiring employer who needs temporary staff. It totally sabotages the worker who needs employment.

And it particularly sabotages the go-between, who now has to go to employers and say, oh, I need all your proprietary salary information so that we can share it with the market. Or we need all the value of your benefits packages. What that's absolutely a ridiculous, meaningless and like preposterous ask.

Thomas Ritter (29:59.074)
for them to maintain a relationship as a go between for these employers and these, that's the way I see it. I mean- And how do, you know, and this stuff has to be tracked. And how do you keep track of all that? How do you get that information? How do you track it? You know, if you ever get audited as a staffing company, how are you supposed to be able to prove that? It's interesting. I think maybe we'll try and circle back with some of the lawyer types.

and maybe get some examples. I know we're probably going to do some things with the New Jersey Staffing Alliance in terms of collecting information or content. So I appreciate you taking a few minutes. I'm sure there's people in our audience who use temporary staffing. And again, this mainly applies to warehousing, supply chain applications, but it's precedent for any industry. And so if you can imagine owning a winery in South Jersey or any seasonal

business that takes a big influx of workers, this precedent has you on the edge of one bad idea with enough signatures and you're in the exact same place where all of a sudden your temporary workers have to make as much as the people who work full time. You have to have a separate check now for the value equivalent of their benefits for your full-time workers. Like this is, as soon as this expands beyond warehousing and supply chain,

I think it would be huge news because I think it's very destructive. But you know, right now it's just a scary story that may be on the horizon for other industries.