This past Monday, the law changed with respect to employees using their Paid Leave Oregon benefits in conjunction with their Oregon Family Leave Act (OFLA) leave, paid time off (PTO), and workers’ compensation.
While the details are too complex to cover in this alert, in many situations, employees will now need to either apply for benefits through Paid Leave Oregon or take time off in accordance with their employers’ PTO plans in order to protect their jobs when they need time off from work.
This is because some kinds of leave are no longer covered by OFLA. For example, until this week, OFLA covered leave for serious health conditions as well as family leave; now employees will need to comply with the requirements for taking these types of leave using the Paid Leave Oregon program.
The primary reason for these changes is to reduce redundancies between OFLA and the Paid Leave Oregon program.
Another change is that OFLA used to allow employees to take up to two weeks of family bereavement leave per family member, not to exceed a total of 12 weeks in a one-year period. Now bereavement leave is limited to a total of four weeks a year. Bereavement leave is not available under Paid Leave Oregon.
The new law also allows employees to use accrued paid leave (for example, sick leave and vacation leave) at the same time they receive Paid Leave Oregon benefits, though employers can establish their own policies as to whether employees can receive more than their full wage replacement when they use PTO and Paid Leave Oregon benefits at the same time.
Similarly, employees can now receive workers’ compensation benefits, except for time loss benefits, while receiving Paid Leave Oregon benefits.
Effective January 2025, leave to complete the legal process required for fostering or adopting a child will be available only under Paid Leave Oregon.
See the Paid Leave Oregon website for more information about this new law.
Washington Law
A new Washington law will allow workers to use paid sick leave when their child’s school or place of care is closed due to a government declaration of an emergency.
In addition, employees will be permitted to take time off to provide care under Washington Paid Sick Leave for the spouse of an employee’s child as well as “any individual who regularly resides in the employee’s home or where the relationship creates an expectation that the employee care for the person, and that individual depends on the employee for care.”
These changes are effective January 1, 2025.
Other legislation, effective last month, changed the definition of “noncompetition covenant,” so that it now also includes “…an agreement that directly or indirectly prohibits the acceptance or transaction of business with a customer.”
Further, a nonsolicitation agreement has been defined as an agreement between the employer and employee that prohibits solicitation of customers by the employee upon termination of employment. Such agreements were not considered to be noncompetition agreements, which are highly regulated.
Under the new law, these agreements can prohibit solicitation only of current customers, meaning that if your nonsolicitation agreements prohibit the solicitation of former customers, they will likely be treated as noncompetition agreements and, as a result, may be unenforceable.
Also effective last month, a new law prohibits Washington employers from mandating that employees attend meetings or speeches on the employer’s opinion of religious or political matters. The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) prohibits employers from firing or disciplining employees who refuse to attend “captive audience” meetings.
The EFCA defines “political matters” as “matters relating to elections for political office, political parties, proposals to change legislation, proposals to change regulations, and the decision to join or support any political party or political, civic, community, fraternal, or labor association or organization.”
“Religious matters” is defined as “matters relating to religious affiliation and practice, and the decision to join or support any religious organization or association.”
There are some exceptions, including for some religious organizations.
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Whether you are an employee or an employer, please feel free to contact us if you have any questions about the above or any other employment-law issues.
For more information about employment law, see Employment Law (in Plain English)®, co-authored by members of this law firm.
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Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
