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Oregon’s Legislature just enacted the most significant legislation for Oregon employers in years.  The new Workplace Fairness Act has been hailed as a #MeToo law and seems intended to curb incidents of sexual harassment in the workplace, but its reach is significantly broader than that.

Key Changes and Takeaways

  • Employers are now required to have

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Spring is in the air and summer is around the corner. You can see the signs everywhere. Flowers. Chirping birds. Increasing temperatures. And summer intern resumes. Experienced HR professionals know they will soon receive many resumes from eager students or recent graduates hoping to work as interns in order to gain valuable experience and networking opportunities. Often, intern candidates offer to work for free in exchange for the chance to gain experience in a job or industry.

Of course the idea, however enticing, of free labor should raise red flags. Many “for profit” business have run into trouble by failing to pay minimum wage and overtime pay to “unpaid interns” who the courts concluded were actually employees.
Continue Reading Are Employers Required to Pay Interns?

On March 22, the Department of Labor (“DOL”) published a new proposed rule that would make several changes to current overtime law.  The proposed rule, which is not yet in effect, would require that:

  • Employees make at least $679 per week ($35,308 annually) to potentially be exempt from overtime. (The current requirement, which has been in place since 2004, is at least $455 per week or $23,660 annually.)
  • Employers be allowed to use nondiscretionary bonuses and incentive payments such as commissions that are paid at least annually to satisfy up to 10 percent of the salary threshold.
  • “Highly compensated employees” make at least $147,414 per year (compared with $100,000 under current law).
  • Going forward, the DOL commit to periodically reviewing and updating the minimum salary threshold (after a public notice and comment period).

Continue Reading Department of Labor Proposes Rule to Make More Employees Eligible for Overtime

Oregon’s new Equal Pay Act and “Pay Equity Analyses” are all the rage in Oregon right now. The majority of the Act’s new requirements go into effect January 1, 2019. Let’s talk about 10 things you should do before the end of the year to make sure you are in compliance with the law.

  1. If you haven’t already removed past compensation questions from your job applications, do so now. The Act makes it unlawful to ask job applicants (or their prior employers) about their current or past compensation until after a conditional job offer that includes the amount of compensation is made.
  2. Train your hiring managers not to ask applicants about current or past compensation. The Act requires employers to pay people based on the job they are (or will be) performing, not what they were paid by a previous employer. Employers must not ask applicants about their current compensation. You can, however, ask applicants about their salary and compensation expectations – but be careful to frame the inquiry to expectations, and be aware that a badly phrased question is a potential violation of this particular provision of the statute.
  3. Rethink salary negotiations – in Oregon, those might be a thing of the past (!). The Act requires employers to pay employees who are doing comparable work the same, unless there is “bona fide factor” to explain the difference such as a seniority system, a merit system, training or experience, or another factor expressly listed in the law. Unless tied to one of those listed factors, market demands or negotiating skills are not bona fide factors justifying a pay disparity.

Continue Reading Pay Equity: 10 Things for Oregon Employers to Do Before the End of the Year

The 2017 Oregon legislature passed a “secure scheduling” or “fair work week” law that imposes significant requirements on certain categories of large employers.  The law, available here, goes into effect July 1, 2018.  We previously blogged about the law here.

Are You a Covered Employer? 

The law applies to retail, hospitality, and food services employers with 500 or more employees worldwide. 
Continue Reading Oregon’s Secure Scheduling Law Goes into Effect July 1: Are You Ready?

In a significant win for employers, the United States Supreme Court has issued a landmark decision upholding the use of class action waivers in employment arbitration agreements.  This ruling permits employers across the country to enforce individual arbitration agreements with employees, even where the agreement requires an employee to pursue legal claims on an individualized…

An employer who unfairly and inaccurately is slammed by a former employee (or maybe even a current employee!) on a job-posting or employer-rating website will often look to its lawyer for help.  Surely the law protects against outrageous false statements that harm the employer’s ability to recruit new talent?  Maybe not—and if there is, it isn’t easy.  The websites that provide the platform for these posts are immune from liability under the federal Communications Decency Act, and most courts have put up substantial roadblocks to enforcement of a subpoena targeted at getting the names of the anonymous posters.  But California now may be leading the way in bringing some sanity to this murky area of the law.
Continue Reading California Court of Appeal Puts a Small Crack in the Glass Door

In light of the current administration’s approach to immigration enforcement, it is important that employers understand their legal rights and responsibilities when faced with potential raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) or local police acting in cooperation with ICE.  Understandably, many employers will want to ensure not only that they are complying with the law, but also that they are looking out for their employees.  Employers must be careful, however, not to provide too much assistance and cross the line between compassionate and criminal behavior.
Continue Reading Protecting Your Company and Your Employees During an ICE Raid

“Equal pay for equal work.”  Everyone – employees and employers alike – can agree that no workers should be paid less than others simply because of their gender, race, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic.  But the reality of the pay gap is more complicated.  Employers make salary decisions based on a number of business factors, like experience, education, and merit, as well as prior salary history.  The Oregon Equal Pay Act (the “Act”), which was unanimously approved by the legislature and is expected to be signed into law by Governor Kate Brown this week, will prohibit employers from asking job applicants about past salary history.
Continue Reading Time to Revise Your Job Applications: Oregon Prohibits Salary History Inquiries in Effort to Address Systemic Wage Inequality

Employers are probably aware that OSHA’s new drug testing and anti-retaliation rule is now in effect. (See our post here discussing the rule.)  However, as we blogged previously, many states have their own reporting requirements, which are not required to track OSHA’s  rules precisely, but which must be “at least as effective” as OSHA’s…