Noncompetition Agreements
Last month, Governor Kate Brown signed House Bill 2992, which requires employers to provide each employee with a signed, written copy of the terms of their noncompetition agreement within 30 days after the termination of employment. At this time, it is unclear whether a copy provided on the employee’s last day would be considered to comply with this requirement.
This new rule, which applies to all noncompetition agreements entered into on or after January 1, 2020, is in addition to a number of other strict requirements relating to noncompetition agreements in Oregon.
These include the following:
* An employer must notify the employee in a written employment offer received by the employee at least two weeks before the first day of employment that a noncompetition agreement is required as a condition of employment.
* The longest enforceable term for a noncompetition agreement is 18 months from the date of termination of employment.
* Noncompetition agreements are enforceable against only exempt employees (that is, salaried employees such as managers and professionals who are exempt from minimum wage and overtime laws) who have access to a “protectable interest” of the employer (for instance, access to proprietary information) and whose annual salary and commissions, at the time of their separation, exceed the median income for a family of four, as determined by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Note that all of these limitations apply only to noncompetition agreements with employees, not to confidentiality and nonsolicitation agreements.
Pregnancy Accommodations
Beginning January 1, 2020, all Oregon employers with at least six employees will be required to provide reasonable accommodations to employees and applicants with work limitations relating to pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, including lactation.
The statute gives four examples of reasonable accommodations: acquisition or modification of equipment or devices; more frequent or longer break periods or periodic rest; assistance with manual labor; and modification of work schedules or job assignments.
The only exception is where a reasonable accommodation “imposes an undue hardship on the operation of the business of an employer.” The law defines an undue hardship as one where the reasonable accommodation requires significant difficulty or expense.
Whether a reasonable accommodation requires significant difficulty or expense is determined by considering the following factors:
* The nature and the cost of the accommodation needed;
* The overall financial resources of the facility (or facilities) involved in the provision of the accommodation, the number of persons employed at the facility and the effect on expenses and resources or other impacts on the operation of the facility caused by the accommodation;
* The overall financial resources of the employer, the overall size of the business of the employer with respect to the number of its employees and the number, type and location of the employer’s facilities; and
* The type of operations conducted by the employer, including the composition, structure and functions of the workforce of the employer and the geographic separateness and administrative or fiscal relationship of the facility or facilities in question to the employer.
In addition to providing reasonable accommodation, employers must provide written notification of the Employer Accommodation for Pregnancy Act to each new hire at the time of hire, pre-existing employees within 180 days of the Act’s effective date (i.e., by June 29, 2020), and any employee who notifies the employer of a pregnancy within 10 days.
Each covered employer must also post a notification in a conspicuous and accessible location on its premises.
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Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions about these new laws or any other questions about employment issues.
Photo by Amanda Vick on Unsplash
