PORTLAND, Ore. — Paid Leave Oregon officially launched this week, giving nearly all Oregonian workers the ability to take up to 12 weeks of paid leave per year for things like the birth of a child, a serious illness or a domestic violence situation. Participants receive state benefit payments in lieu of paychecks while they're away. All eligible workers in Oregon began making 0.6% payroll contributions to the program fund at the start of this year, with big employers contributing another 0.4%.
Oregon already requires employers to allow their employees to take up to 12 weeks of leave through the Oregon Family Leave Act, but it wasn't necessarily paid leave until now. There were no state-provided benefits, and employers were only required to maintain an employee's health benefits — it was up to individual employers to decide whether to offer paid leave.
As a result, there's a highly varied patchwork of existing employer-provided family leave policies offered throughout the state, and the launch of Paid Leave Oregon has left some Oregon workers taking to social media to try to figure out their eligibility, particularly when it comes to how the state program interacts with their existing company benefits.
THE QUESTION
Can Paid Leave Oregon benefits be combined with existing employer-provided benefits such as paid time off or company-paid parental leave, allowing Oregon workers to claim both at the same time or back-to-back?
THE SOURCES
THE ANSWER
Yes, Paid Leave Oregon's rules do allow residents to claim state benefits and employer-provided benefits at the same time. But there's a major caveat: it's generally up to individual employers to decide whether their employees can use company-provided benefits while they're drawing state benefits.
WHAT WE FOUND
The vast majority of non-federal workers in Oregon are eligible to receive Paid Leave Oregon benefits, and an employee will not be disqualified from state benefits if they use any employer-provided benefits during their leave. Paid Leave Oregon doesn't place any upper or lower limits on the type or amount of separate benefits that employers can offer.
There is one big exception: Companies that already offer paid leave plans with equal or better conditions than the state program can apply for "equivalent plan" status, which exempts both the company and its employees from paying into the state program, making the employees ineligible for state benefits because they're guaranteed company benefits instead.
Outside of that scenario, it's generally up to individual employers to decide whether their employees on Paid Leave Oregon will be allowed to use company benefits such as vacation time, paid time off or company-provided parental leave at the same time.
It's also not an all-or-nothing proposition; employers can set specific limits for how much paid time off an employee can take while on leave. For example, the Paid Leave Oregon benefits don't fully replace higher-earning employees' salaries, so an employer could declare that employees on Paid Leave Oregon are only allowed to use as much of their paid time off as it takes to fill the gap between their state benefits and their regular weekly salary.
However, an employer can't force an employee to use company benefits alongside Paid Leave Oregon benefits if the employee doesn't want to. For example, according to an FAQ from the Oregon Employment Department, a company can't require employees to use up all their accrued vacation time first before they start drawing Paid Leave Oregon benefits.
What about existing leave programs?
Even before Paid Leave Oregon entered the picture, there were already two programs mandating up to 12 weeks of protected — but unpaid — leave: the federal Family and Medical Leave Act and the Oregon Family Leave Act, which is similar to the federal law but covers a wider range of workers. Paid Leave Oregon and the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries have published a chart that compares the three programs.
The eligibility rules are slightly different for each program, but they all cover a lot of the same circumstances, leading to questions about whether Paid Leave Oregon overlaps with the existing programs or if they could be invoked sequentially if a person qualifies for more than one.
For example, could an employee with a newborn take 12 weeks of paid leave under Paid Leave Oregon, immediately followed by 12 more weeks of unpaid leave under the Oregon Family Leave Act? Or would they only be allowed to take 12 weeks of leave that would count toward both programs?
According to an FAQ from Paid Leave Oregon, the programs are required to mostly overlap, but they can be staggered by four weeks. In other words, employees who are eligible for both Paid Leave Oregon and the Oregon Family Leave Act are allowed to take a total of up to 16 weeks off leave per one-year period, but they can only receive state benefits for 12 of those weeks — the remaining four are solely covered by the Oregon Family Leave Act.
It's also important to note that Paid Leave Oregon does not require employees to take all 12 weeks in one shot — it has to be taken in units of at least one full work day at a time, but it can be split up or stretched out, such as by working three days per week and taking leave for the remaining two.
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