The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”) announced late last week that it was rescinding its 2013 “Fairfax” memorandum, which allowed union representatives to participate in workplace safety walk-throughs.
Here is the background. Soon after the Occupational Health and Safety Act (“the Act”) passed in 1970, OSHA interpreted the law to allow employees to
Oregon manufacturing employers have been following the ongoing turmoil surrounding the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries’ (“BOLI”) recent interpretation of Oregon’s requirement that manufacturing employees receive overtime when they work more than 10 hours in a day. In the latest turn, a Multnomah County Circuit Court judge ruled yesterday that, contrary to BOLI’s advice, a manufacturing employer is not required to pay employees daily overtime and weekly overtime when manufacturing employees work more than 40 hours in a work week. Instead, the judge ruled that the employer must pay the employees the greater of either weekly overtime or daily overtime, but not both. A copy of the opinion in the case (Mazahua v. Portland Specialty Baking LLC) is here.
Here is the background.
Continue Reading Breaking: Court Rules Against Double Overtime for Oregon Manufacturing Employers
The Ninth Circuit released a precedent-setting Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) decision yesterday, and it’s a big win for employers. The Court held that an employee who makes “serious and credible threats of violence toward his co-workers” is not a “qualified individual with a disability” and therefore cannot state a claim under the ADA or Oregon disability law. Karen O’Connor, Brenda Baumgart and Andrea Thompson from Stoel Rives represented the employer in this case, Mayo v. PCC Structurals, Inc., and a link to the Court’s decision is here.
Plaintiff’s Stress Leads to Death Threats in the Workplace
Plaintiff was a long-term welder at an industrial facility. Despite a 1999 diagnosis of major depressive disorder, he worked without significant issue for decades. In 2010, plaintiff and a few co-workers claimed a supervisor bullied them at work. Shortly after a meeting among plaintiff, a co-worker and the company’s HR director to discuss the supervisor, plaintiff began making threatening comments. He told a co-worker that he “felt like coming down to [the facility] with a shotgun and blowing off” the heads of his supervisor and a different manager. Among other comments, he also told other co-workers that he planned to come to the facility during the day shift “to take out management” and that he “wanted to bring a gun down to [the facility] and start shooting people.”Continue Reading The Ninth Circuit Joins Its Sister Circuits in Ruling That an Employee Who Threatens Co-Workers with Violence Is Not “Qualified” Under the ADA
As anticipated, on December 12, 2014 the NLRB announced that the final “Quickie” Election Rule will be published in the Federal Register on December 15, 2014 and will take effect on April 14, 2015. Among other changes, the rule will shorten the time between the filing of a petition and the election for union representation
A new case from the Oregon Court of Appeals, Compressed Pattern LLC v. Employment Department, provides some clarity about the “maintain a separate business location” prong of Oregon’s unique independent contractor statute, ORS 670.600.
First, the facts. In the summer of 2009, a design company retained a recently-laid-off architectural intern to provide drafting services on some of its projects. The design company’s owners agreed to pay him $35.00 an hour for his services, and paid him periodically based on statements of his work he prepared and submitted. The design company provided the architect-intern with general specifications and timelines for the drafting projects, but didn’t otherwise instruct him on how to complete them. It also didn’t provide him with scheduled hours, a workspace, supplies and equipment, an email address or business cards. In fact, the architect-intern performed his drafting work free of charge at the offices of the architectural firm that had laid him off. The architectural firm was not affiliated in any way with the design company. The architect-intern performed drafting services for clients other than the design company, and even hired a friend to help him with an especially big drafting project. Meanwhile, the architect-intern spent his spare time preparing for the exams necessary to become a licensed architect. The licensing authority charged the architect-intern hundreds of dollars to take each exam.Continue Reading Court of Appeals Interprets Definition of “Independent Contractor” Under ORS 670.600
Is the Oregon Court of Appeals back in the wrongful-discharge business? It’s a fair question to ask after the court’s decision last week in Lucas v. Lake County, –Or. App.– (2012). Reversing the trial court’s motion to dismiss, the court held that a sheriff’s deputy who served as a correctional officer could sue for wrongful discharge in violation of public policy based on his allegation that he’d been fired for demanding that the sheriff implement a training program regarding sexual relations with inmates, and for concluding that another sheriff’s deputy had traded contraband for sex with an inmate.
What Is An "Important" Public Duty?
Wrongful discharge has had an eventful history in the Oregon courts. Broadly speaking, in a wrongful discharge claim an employee alleges that the employer terminated him for a reason that is inconsistent with an important public policy. The key (and usually thorny) legal issue is identifying the public policy and weighing whether it is sufficiently important to protect an employee from being fired. The Oregon courts have deemed an employee’s need to be absent from work to serve on a jury (Nees v. Hocks, 272 Or. 210 (1975)) and an employee’s internal protest that a fire department covered up evidence of a safety violation (Love v. Polk County Fire Dist., 209 Or. App. 474 (2006)) important enough to qualify. On the other hand, a doctor’s disagreement with his medical group’s treatment recommendations (Eusterman v. Northwest Permanente P.C., 204 Or. App. 224 (2006)) and private security guards’ lawful arrest of drunken concertgoers (Babick v. Oregon Arena Corp., 333 Or. 401 (2002)) didn’t make the cut.