The beleaguered state agency will hire dozens of investigators and other staff, but a permanent funding solution is still needed.
In a season of drastic governmental cutbacks, one Oregon agency has found some relief.
The Bureau of Labor & Industries — which according to the state labor commissioner has suffered from cuts and underinvestment for decades — got a 30% bump in the latest state budget, approved by the Legislature late last month. BOLI plans to use the money to tackle a backlog of 7,500 civil rights and wage theft cases, and take other steps to improve efficiency.
The agency plans to add staff around the organization — intake specialists, mediators, case investigators, customer service professionals — and replace its outdated and crash-prone case management system.
The influx has Oregon Labor Commissioner Christina Stephenson harkening to a time of ALF and Cabbage Patch Kids.
“This gets us close to where we were in the ‘80s,” Stephenson says. “At the time, we were serving a little over one million Oregonians. And now it’s over two million Oregonians.”
Elected in 2023, Stephenson was a frequent presence in Salem this past legislative session, testifying in support of the agency’s latest budget request of $83.5 million. The proposal, two years in the making, sought a transfer of $25 million from the Worker Benefit Fund to BOLI’s budget ($53 million last biennium). A bipartisan task force had identified the WBF, which is funded jointly by workers and employers, on the argument there’s a clear nexus between the fund’s goals and the work BOLI does. A wide array of business and labor groups signed on to support the proposal, from the AFL-CIO and SEIU, to Associated General Contractors and Oregon Business & Industry.
“The general fund is always kind of oversubscribed, so we knew that a general fund pathway for this investment was not realistic. And this was before the bad budget forecast came through,” Stephenson says. “We were able to convince the Legislature to utilize funds that were essentially just sitting there and divert them to BOLI.”
Led by Stephenson, a former Portland-area employment lawyer, BOLI enforces state labor laws and anti-discrimination policies in housing and public accommodations. The agency has governed over apprenticeships in Oregon since World War II. (The agency is separate from the Oregon Employment Department, with more than 2,000 employees, and Oregon OSHA, the state version of the federal workplace safety agency, which employs several hundred.)
While BOLI’s budget has largely avoided major cuts in recent years, investment in the agency has gone down even as the state’s population has nearly doubled. In the 1980s, the agency had a staff of 214 to serve a statewide worker population of 1.2 million. Today, 158 BOLI employees serve a state with 2.2 million workers.
The result can be seen in wait times for resolutions are around 18 months for wage and hour complaints — and approaching two years for civil rights cases. The backlog has led BOLI to dismiss hundreds of civil rights cases. The majority of “wage and hour” cases filed with BOLI are ultimately substantiated, meaning investigators typically find that claimants stuck in the backlog weren’t paid what they were owed. The long wait time means those workers endure further financial hardship as their cases drag on, and non-compliant employers continue to operate with impunity.
These problems also contribute to employee burnout on BOLI’s end, according to Christina Stephenson. A portion of the one-time funding will be directed to pay raises for some employees, and other employee retention and recruitment efforts.
“Burnout is huge when every day you have to tell people you cannot help them, or you can’t help them as quickly as you want to help them,” Stephenson says.
One argument is the money will allow BOLI to enforce the labor laws passed by the Legislature. Over the past 10 years, the Legislature has approved 74 laws that impact BOLI — from changes to payroll documentation to overtime pay requirements for agricultural workers. But Stephenson says the agency has only been given the funds to enforce 10 of those laws. “The Oregon Legislature has passed some really worker-friendly laws, but they haven’t all been able to be enforced.”
Stephenson thinks in an era of federal cutbacks, her agency could rise in prominence. In the past few months, BOLI investigators have heard more employers are retaliating against whistleblowing workers with threats to call immigration services, Stephenson said.
And while a permanent, sustainable funding solution remains to be identified, Stephenson says the latest budget allocation will get the agency where it needs to be for at least the next few years.
“Oregonians value workplaces that are safe and discrimination-free. And at least in terms of employment law, the vast majority of our laws are pretty common sense,” Stephenson says. “They kind of boil down to: don’t be a jerk and you’ll be fine.”
Click here to subscribe to Oregon Business.
