no amendments will be made to the state's paid sick and family leave program that some Advocates claim will leave behind more than 1 million New Jersey workers the decision comes as protesters rallied at the State House urging lawmakers to revise the bill before the final vote some of those desired revisions by Advocates included extending protection that will cover these additional workers who they say will now be left behind from accessing job protected paid leave senior correspondent Joanna Gagis is at the State House with the latest Joanna yeah Raven a bill before the assembly Appropriations Committee today would expand the requirements for employers to provide paid leave to their employees now current state law only requires that an employer with 30 employees or more provide extended paid leave but this bill would move that number down to five employees but it brought push back both from the business Community as well as advocates who want to see those workers rights expanded to everyone in the state paid leave is a critical component of ensuring that our Workforce can work and to make sure that family members can balance the needs of caring for loved ones 13 states have paid family leave uh all of those states have job protection at varying degrees based upon the size of the employer so as mentioned we currently have uh job protection only for workers um that are employed by business with over 30 employees and so imagine for a moment paying for a benefit um that every single worker pays for but they are afraid to use out of fear of Retribution from their employer we support the bill only with amendments and the amendments are really critical because without them we leave about a million workers behind and those workers are disproportionately women workers uh they're lower income workers they're more precarious workers that actually need job protection so that they can be able to afford to take their paid Le benefits when they need and that they are contributing to through small payroll taxes but the New Jersey business and industry Association says this creates an onerous burden on small businesses in the state if you have few employees on payroll they would have to hire temporary workers they have to train new employees and then keep them on payroll while the employee is out on leave with a business as small as five employees this could be unduly burdensome and really difficult to do business in New Jersey I'd also like to note the legislature also recently passed a bill um called temporary workers Bill of Rights which um would actually make it more difficult to hire temporary workers in New Jersey that perspective was shared by several Republican members of the committee this bill will apply specifically to small business this bill specifically actually micro business you're going to add to this program 170,000 that were not currently in the program taking care of a child taking care of a loved one those are good reasons to want to take Le and for the mom and pop Flores shop who only has three employees and can't afford to have somebody out for 12 weeks for another small employer who has six employees and can't afford to lose their bookkeeper for 12 weeks they have pressures too and when you say it's fundamentally unjust for someone not to be able to take those benefits you're not taking into account what's fundamentally fair to the people who employ the employees the bill did pass out of committee it now needs to make its way all the way through the senate in this lame-duck session in Trenton I'm Joanna Gagis NJ Spotlight News NJ Spotlight News