in our Spotlight on Business Report tonight there's a group of workers in New Jersey who still don't have the same access to Paid Family Leave as many others in the state right now the state law only guarantees that extended leave for employees in companies with 30 or more workers business and industry Advocates have fought hard to leave small employers out of those requirements but today a coalition of Advocates held a virtual press conference opposing those exceptions they're calling on the Senate to require all companies with at least five employees to offer paid family leave and other benefits to their employees Raven Santana has more on their [Music] demands it was pretty close to when I was getting ready to have my baby that it it dawned on me that I was stuck in that situation Eda Laos Valentino knows firsthand the profound impact of not being eligible for Paid Family Leave Valentino says the excitement of starting a new job quickly turned into a nightmare after was forced to return to work after 6 weeks or else she risked losing her new position she says the lack of appropriate and reasonable paid time off was a major factor that contributed to her experiencing postpartum depression so it was during my pregnancy that I transitioned jobs um and of course you know pregnancy is nine months the uh eligibility for the leave is longer than that so uh it's something that struck me after the fact Valentino is one of nearly 20 people who attended a virtual press conference hosted by the NJ time to Care Coalition where they discussed a new report that highlighted the findings of a recently updated study that revealed some 1.7 million New Jersey workers lack job protection coverage under the current NJ Family Leave Act which is used when workers need to take time to bond with newborns or care for loved ones around 27% of workers are not protected because of those tenure and hour requirements and the largest group are people who've not worked at the same employer for at least 52 weeks or at least a year the other things that we found are that they really are the most vulnerable workers more often women and then workers whose jobs maybe have a lot of turnover like food preparation health care support personal care aids home health aids those kinds of jobs are also the places where people are less likely to be protected and so these are some of the most vulnerable workers the findings are now being used as evidence to push amendments to expand family leave for Jersey workers currently under the law only workers at businesses with 30 or more employees are guaranteed to return to their position after they take up to 12 weeks of family leave the legislation that was passed in the assembly back in February would lower that threshold to 20 in 2024 to 10 in 2025 and to 5 in 2026 um so we're proposing right now 90 days at that employer and totally remove the Thousand hours worked requirement because it's just kind of complic complicating and really unnecessary and so what we're proposing is that change be made in the Family Leave Act so that those workers who are taking the benefit you know if they work for an employer with five employees and they've been there 90 days they know that their job is protected replacing employees is expensive with turnover costs averaging one of the employees annual salary small business owners want to do the right thing by their employees clear fair fair rules help us to do that but not everyone is on board with the proposed changes njbia vice president of government Affairs Alyssa Frank says the changes will hurt not help small businesses so we don't think that there's a need to go down any further really in part and mostly because this is really impacting our small businesses those mom and pop shops on Main Street they're already having a really hard time recovering from covid and this is just another regul that's going to make it harder for them to continue to do business in New Jersey Frank says she is hopeful that the Senate will remain steadfast in its commitment to the current bill but in the meantime she will work with the sponsors to show some amendments that would make the bill better small business Advocates are hoping that their proposed amendments will be honored and a revised version of the bill will be passed in the Senate IN NJ Spotlight News I'm Raven Santana [Music]