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Last month, the Oregon Employment Department (OED) put forward draft regulations to implement SB 916 (i.e. unemployment insurance payments to workers on strike). These rules should have been limited to implementing SB 916, but instead the agency took the opportunity to rewrite unemployment insurance law in Oregon to disadvantage public and private employers.
What do the draft regulations do? They tip the balance for Oregon’s UI system to workers and drive-up system costs for employers by eliminating accountability for job seekers and treat unemployment insurance as a paid workplace benefit, similar to paid family and medical leave, instead of a social safety net.
As currently written, these draft rules will have the effect of extending the length of time claimants are collecting UI benefits, increasing the financial burden on employers.
The draft rules:
- Give claimants the ability to create new restrictions on the types of work and schedules they are willing to accept.
- Eliminate the ability of the Director to require claimants to accept available work;
- Extend time limits: an absence or illness is not disqualifying unless it takes up more than half of the week.
- Eliminate restrictions on UI related to incarcerations or drug treatment.
- Make significant changes the division’s interpretation of “actively” looking for work:
- Create a new standard for claimants that are “employer attached” and eliminates current 4-week limit on temporary layoffs
- Create a blanket interpretation that employees are “actively” looking for work when they are unemployed due to a labor dispute and there is an expectation they will return to work when the strike ends
- Allow employees to seek only remote work if remote work is typically available for their occupation.
We need your help!
Oregon’s economy is already showing troubling signs of rising unemployment, steep housing costs, businesses choosing other states for expansion and shuttered storefronts. Part of the OED’s mission is to support business, but there is little in these rules that helps employers.
Comments can be submitted to: oed_rules@employ.oregon.gov by September 4th at 5:00 PM.
Click here for a list of talking points
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