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Oregon recently passed amendments to its statewide sick time law, clearing up several areas of uncertainty for employers.  The amendments clarify that:

  • Employers may cap employees’ annual accrual of sick leave at 40 hours. The pre-amendment version of the sick leave law stated that employees had the right to “earn and use up to 40 hours of paid sick time per year,” but also mandated that employees accrue one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked.  At the “1 for 30” rate, full-time employees would reach the 40-hour limit well before the end of the year, leading to confusion about whether they were entitled to continue accruing sick time for the remainder of the year (which would, in effect, give them more than 40 hours of annual leave).  The amendments, which expressly state that “[e]mployers may limit the number of hours of paid sick time that employees may accrue to 40 hours per year,” make clear that continued accrual beyond 40 hours is not a requirement.  Once employees have accrued 40 hours, they are done for the year, even if there are several months left in which they will not accrue any time.

Continue Reading Oregon Amends Sick Leave Law: 5 Key Clarifications

Governor Kate Brown signed into law the new Oregon Paid Sick Leave (“OPSL”) law enacted by the Legislature on June 12. The new law becomes effective January 1, 2016. Oregon is the fourth state to enact a state-wide paid sick leave law after Massachusetts, Connecticut, and California. The text of the OPSL is available here.

The OPSL will look familiar to Oregon employers that have already been dealing with local PSL ordinances enacted in Portland and Eugene in recent years, which OPSL now preempts and replaces. OPSL largely tracks those local leave laws in substance, and generally requires employers to provide up to 40 hours of sick leave per year. Here is a detailed summary of its requirements, including where it differs from the Portland and Eugene ordinances.
Continue Reading Oregon Enacts State-Wide Paid Employee Sick Leave Which (Mostly) Replaces Local Ordinances in Portland and Eugene

Thumbs upAllow us to pat ourselves on the back for a moment.  Prognosticating from 2013 into the future, we accurately predicted that in 2014 the Seattle Seahawks would win the Super Bowl and that the public would continue to strongly support minimum wage increases and paid sick leave laws.  (Please politely ignore our Portland Trailblazers NBA championship prediction.)

This year voters in five states overwhelmingly supported an increased minimum wage, while voters in Massachusetts and three New Jersey and California cities adopted paid sick leave.  These states and cities join a growing trend of support for “living wages” and paid sick leave laws.  Earlier this year, for instance, Seattle approved a minimum wage of $15 per hour, while Portland implemented its paid sick leave law and California became the second of now three states to give its employees paid sick leave on a statewide basis (see our posts on Portland’s law here, and California’s law).Continue Reading Nostradamus, Minimum Wage, and Paid Sick Leave

iStock_000011905991SmallOn September 10, 2014, California Governor Jerry Brown signed AB 1522 (the “Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act of 2014”) and made California the second state in the nation (after Connecticut) to enact a state-wide law requiring most California employers to provide paid sick leave to employees.  This marks the latest development in a growing trend that has seen similar paid sick leave laws enacted in other jurisdictions in recent years, mostly at the city level, including in Seattle in 2012, in Portland, OR in 2013, and in Eugene, OR in 2014.

Under the California law, most California employees who work 30 or more days within a year will accrue one hour of paid sick leave at their regular rate of pay for every 30 hours worked.  The law also imposes new notice and recordkeeping requirements onto California employers.

The law allows employees to carry over accrued paid sick days from one year to the next.  Employers, however, are allowed to limit an employee’s use of paid sick days to 24 hours or three days a year and to cap accrued paid sick leave at either 48 hours or 6 days.  While an employer is not obligated to pay out accrued but unused paid sick leave at termination, if an employee separates from an employer and is rehired within one year from the date of separation, previously accrued and unused paid sick days must be reinstated.  If an employer already has a paid leave policy or paid time off policy, it is not required to provide additional paid sick days under the new law so long as its existing policy satisfies certain requirements, including making available an amount of leave that may be used for the same purposes and under the same conditions as specified in the Act.Continue Reading California Enacts State-Wide Paid Employee Sick Leave Law

We previously advised you that the Portland City Council was considering an ordinance that would require Portland employers to provide sick leave to employees. The Council voted unanimously to approve the ordinance on Wednesday, meaning that Portland will now join a handful of jurisdictions (including Connecticut, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.) that require employers to give employees time off for illness. Similar bills have also been introduced in the state legislature, although it is too soon to predict whether they will pass.

The Portland ordinance, which takes effect on January 1, 2014, generally requires private employers to provide 40 hours of sick leave per year to eligible employees. For employers with six or more employees, the time must be paid; for smaller businesses, leave may be unpaid. Employers that already provide sick leave equivalent to or in excess of what the ordinance requires do not need to make any changes.Continue Reading Portland City Council Approves Sick Leave Ordinance