Oregon Labor Bureau will begin dismissing wage claims from workers earning more than $53K

Labor Commissioner Christina Stephenson told the Senate Labor and Business Committee that the agency will begin dismissing all claims from workers who earn more than $52,710 in an effort to tackle a massive backlog of complaints that it says it cannot handle due to chronic understaffing.

“Our proposed earnings threshold for triage is a last-resort decision driven by necessity,” Rachel Mann, spokesperson for the agency, wrote in an email to The Oregonian/OregonLive Tuesday. “We don’t have the resources to help everyone, and we are determined to prioritize those who are paid the least.”

The announcement comes a month after the agency asked Gov. Tina Kotek and lawmakers to increase its budget by roughly 36% for the coming two years, saying it would begin dismissing claims without an influx of new funding. The Bureau of Labor and Industries currently employs 149 full-time workers and has a two-year budget of $59.6 million.

With the new policy, Stephenson said the agency expects it will investigate 17% fewer claims of pay deprivation.

Stephenson said the policy change on its own won’t fix the agency’s lack of capacity. Without additional funding, Stephenson said, the agency will need to reject 70% of claims it receives. To do that, she said it will consider setting a more stringent income threshold for workers from whom it will accept claims and also weigh whether to dismiss specific types of claims entirely beginning in July.

“The lens through which we contemplate these thresholds and additional types of claims and complaints wholly recognizes the impact of the choices we’re being forced to make while simultaneously choosing the thresholds that preserve the most rights for the most vulnerable workers,” Mann said.

The announcement of the policy change appeared to catch lawmakers off guard.

“That’s, um, alarming, in my opinion,” Sen. Kathleen Taylor, a Portland Democrat who chairs the Senate Labor and Business Committee, told Stephenson in response to the announcement.

“It is alarming,” Stephenson agreed.

Stephenson said the agency’s budget hasn’t kept pace as the number of employees in Oregon has grown to 2.1 million.

Stephenson said the agency’s wage and hour division employs only 10 investigators, each of whom has been asked to process more than 200 claims a year, given the 208% increase in wage claims the agency saw from 2020 to 2024. That’s more than double the 85 claims per investigator that the agency considers to be full capacity.

Stephenson said most claims the agency receives are valid.

Along with setting an income threshold for wage claims, Stephenson said the agency has also begun dismissing lower-priority civil rights claims.

It is prioritizing domestic violence leave, retaliation, housing and specific discrimination cases, as well as cases in which the Labor Bureau is the only enforcement agency or whistleblowers allege violations within state government. Mann said cases that don’t meet that criteria are the most likely to be dismissed.

The Labor Bureau anticipates dismissing 400 such civil rights claims before the end of the year, Stephenson said.

Mann said the agency is informing workers on its website of the claims it is no longer accepting.

Beginning in October, workers who file online wage complaints will have to indicate on their complaint whether they meet income thresholds, Mann said. If they earn too much, their claims will automatically be dismissed, she said.

Claims filed before the new policy goes into effect will remain in the agency’s system to be processed, even if the complainant doesn’t meet the new income thresholds, Mann said.

Mann said the agency will communicate with workers who have their claims dismissed to provide a list of resources and attorneys they could contact.

“We understand that introducing an earnings threshold for triage is a drastic and difficult step, and is not something we take lightly,” Mann said.