New Jersey Employers Must Post the Worker Misclassification Poster

Great Seal of New Jersey

As readers of this blog are aware, in recent years New Jersey has aggressively pushed to end the misclassification of employees as independent contractors. In January 2020, New Jersey enacted five new laws combating employee misclassification, which we wrote about here. Those laws, among other things, require employers to post a Notice of Employee Rights & Employer Responsibilities (the “Notice”) concerning the misclassification of employees as independent contractors.

The New Jersey Department of Labor has released the model Notice which employers must post “in a place or places accessible to all employees in each of the employer’s workplaces.” A copy of the Notice is available here. Failure to display the Notice is a disorderly persons offense and subjects an employer to potential fines of between $100 and $1,000. Any business that has not already posted the Notice should do so immediately.

Businesses operating in New Jersey need to be extremely cautious when utilizing independent contractors. New Jersey has the broadest statutory definition of employee in the country, which can result in workers who would qualify as independent contractors in other states being deemed employees in New Jersey. Moreover, New Jersey imposes potentially significant liabilities for misclassifying an employee as an independent contractor. Those penalties can include criminal liability under New Jersey’s recently amended Wage Theft Act.

If you have questions about the classification of your business’s workers, please contact us at (201) 345-5412 or use our online scheduling page to set up a complimentary consultation.