labor lawAdivision of labor law center

The Oregon leave law would not cover all employers in its requirements for them to give the right of unpaid time off to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking. Instead, the bill as passed now would only require that certain employers with six or more employees on their pay roll have to follow the law. And the law would not be binding even for employers with six or more employees on their books.

According to my sources, the law allows employers to request that workers come back to work any time their unpaid time off starts to become a burden for the employer. Employees could also use vacation time and other paid time off in order to get paid while they are on this break as well. The official terms for this might be undue hardship on the employer, and that the unpaid time off period must also be for a “reasonable” amount of time. I guess that would leave it up to the employer and the employee to determine exactly what is “reasonable” when it comes to the length of their unpaid time off, and that could also open up interpretation to lawyers and the courts.

The bill, however, does say that the Bureau of Labor and Industries in the state would play the roll of regulating and administering the unpaid leave system, and the bureau would also set the specific guidelines for whether or not a new Oregon labor law poster will be required, and how the unpaid leave time will work.

But I am getting ahead of myself here. The law still needs to go to the House in Oregon and get passed as is by them. If the House makes any changes to the law, then it would need to go back to the Senate, and they would need to OK those changes. If those changes could not get ironed out, then the bill will stall. Or the House could simply not vote on the bill at all.

A similar bill as the one in Washington is under consideration in the legislature of a neighbor up there in the Pacific Northwest. Oregon is considering a type of time off law, though it will not be as extensive as the one proposed in Washington, where the family leave law will allow workers to take five weeks paid leave off to care for a sick family member or heal up themselves.

In the case of the Oregon leave law, the bill is specifically for those workers who just suffered through a domestic violence issue, or who have been sexually assaulted or stalked recently. The law would give these particular victims the right to take unpaid leave off from their jobs in order to get treatment, heal, and take care of themselves. The other obvious difference between the Oregon bill and the Washington bill is that the Washington bill gives the workers paid time off, but the Oregon bill gives them unpaid time off.

The Oregon bill, as is, passed the state Senate this past Wednesday, by a vote of 25 to 2. The bill is called Senate Bill 946 there. The next step is for the bill to go to the House, which would also have to vote on and OK the bill as is for it to be passed to the state governor as a potential new law.

The bill’s particulars go like this: the law would give victims unpaid time off to be able to get their homes in order and safe again if necessary, as well as time to talk to law enforcement if they are pressing charges. The unpaid time off could also cover the time needed to get help from a lawyer, as well as help from the proper medical and psychological authorities or counselors and other such professionals.

While we’re on this new topic of sick leaves laws, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and other labor laws—state and federal—that have to do with how employers alloww their employees time off, we should cover a breaking news item out of the capital of Oregon, Salem. There, the state House just approved a bill this past Monday that would give workers the option of using their paid sick leave in a more flexible manner.

According to the new bill, workers could then use their paid sick leave days, given to them by their employers, in order to also do family leave type of things, such as taking care of little ones, or caring for a sick spouse, or taking family members to the doctor and such.

There is already a law in the books, from 1995, that allows people to take family leave from their jobs in order to take care of a sick child or a sick spouse, or to have a baby or recover from a serious health issue of their own. That’s the famous Family and Medical Leave Act that we’re always talking about here at this blog, and for which you have the FMLA poster in all of your work sites.

Under that law, however, the family leave time that is required by the government for employers to provide can be unpaid time off, unless that employee chooses to use their vacation time as paid time off. This new law, though, would allow employees in Oregon to use their paid sick time off for these family reasons (without having to lie about to an employer that might not be flexible and kind enough to already allow that).

The bill passed the House by the count of a 40 to 18 vote, but it still needs to go to the Senate and be voted on there before it can become a law.

While looking into the Family Medical Leave Act, I found that Oregon passed the Act in 1995 in the Legislature. The Act was established to protect workers that face family medical emergencies. As such, employers that operate companies of 25 workers or more must participate in the Act by providing workers with job-protected leave if they have to care for either themselves or a family member. This Act is put in place when the worker or family member faces illness, injury, childbirth or adoption.

Workers are eligible to take leave if they have been employed for 180 days within one calendar year that immediately precedes the necessary leave time. The worker must also have worked an average of 25 hours per week during the 180-day cycle. If a worker needs parental leave, then he or she does not necessarily have to work the 25 hours a week.

Employees are then eligible to take up to 12 weeks off of worker within one calendar year. However, if a woman must leave work for childbirth, she is also eligible for an additional 12 weeks for other illness or injury circumstances.

During this time, the leave is unpaid, but employees may use vacation time to make up for any time off. If the leave is to take care of a newborn or adopted child, then the employee may also use sick leave time. Employers must guarantee that the employee will return to his or her old job or to an equivalent job if the old job was been filled.

It is important to note that the Family Medical Leave Act not only allows for leave for the mother during the birth of a child, but also for the father. If a child is not born, but rather adopted or taken in through foster care, the parents may also take the full 12 week leave.

The Oregon Complete Labor Law poster is available providing information on all Oregon state laws including all of the most recent federal laws.