BAKER CITY — The lunch rush ended at the Inland Cafe, and longtime employee Cloie Christensen was filling the lull before the dinner hour by wrapping clean silverware in napkins as the Baker City restaurant braced for the next wave of customers.

There was a time when Christensen was unable to do such a task. Earlier this year, she fell ill with pneumonia and had to miss two weeks of work.

She didn’t have any accrued sick time available, and the loss of a paycheck would have been a serious financial blow, but her co-workers donated some of their sick time to help tide her over.

“Somehow,” she said, “I made it through.”

If a similar situation happened today, however, Christensen would have a better option — Paid Leave Oregon.

The new state program provides up to 12 weeks of paid family or medical leave from work. Leave can be taken anytime within a 52-week period for a variety of reasons, from bonding with a new baby to caring for a seriously ill family member. An additional two weeks of leave may be granted for certain conditions stemming from pregnancy and childbirth, and “safe leave” is available for people trying to escape an abusive relationship.

How we got here

Oregon joined eight other states plus Washington, D.C., to offer a form of paid family and medical leave when the Paid Leave Oregon program began accepting applications this summer.

California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Washington state already have programs in place. Vermont also offers paid leave, but only to state employees.

Another half-dozen states — Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland and Minnesota — are in the process of rolling out paid family and medical leave programs of their own.

The United States does have a federal mandate for family and medical leave, enshrined in the 1993 Family Medical Leave Act, but the time off does not have to be paid, preventing many Americans from taking leave due to the loss of income.

President Joe Biden has proposed the American Families Plan, which, if enacted, would include paid family leave for all Americans. But until a federal mandate is passed, it’s up to individual states to devise their own programs.

Nuts and bolts

Created by a 2019 state law, Paid Leave Oregon was touted by former Gov. Kate Brown’s office as the most progressive paid family and medical leave program in the country.

Before the law was passed, only half of Oregon’s private sector employers offered paid sick leave to their workers and just 11% offered paid family leave, according to a 2018 survey the state conducted.

Employees and businesses have been paying into the program, which the Oregon Employment Department administers, since the beginning of the year. The agency began accepting applications Aug. 14, and Sept. 3 marked the first day workers could take benefits.

The program is funded by a combined 1% payroll tax, with employees contributing 0.6% of their wages and employers kicking in the remaining 0.4%. For 2023, gross employee wages will be taxed up to $132,900. This amount will be adjusted annually for inflation. Only employers with 25 or more employees are required to make contributions; those with fewer than 25 workers have the option to contribute.

Benefits cover up to 100% of a worker’s wages, including for all low-income Oregonians. The amount depends on how much one earned the year before.

Paid Leave Oregon also is available to self-employed people, who have to enroll for coverage and make quarterly contributions to be eligible for benefits.

The program provides up to 12 weeks of paid leave, which can be taken anytime within a 52-week period for the birth of a child, to bond with a child in their first year of life, to bond with a newly adopted child or foster child placed in one’s care, to care for a family member with a qualifying serious health condition or to care for one’s own serious health condition. An additional two weeks of leave are available for certain medical conditions stemming from pregnancy and childbirth.

A serious health condition is an illness, injury or physical or mental condition that requires inpatient care, poses an imminent danger of death or possibility of death in the near future, requires constant or continuing care, involves a period of incapacity, involves multiple treatments or involves a period of disability due to pregnancy. Applicants do have to provide documentation from a health care provider regarding the condition to qualify.

For family leave, a family member is defined as your spouse, domestic partner or child (biological, adopted, stepchild or foster), your spouse or domestic partner’s child, your child’s spouse or domestic partner, your parent (biological, adoptive, stepparent, foster parent or legal guardian), the parent of your spouse or domestic partner, your parent’s spouse or domestic partner, your sibling or stepsibling or their spouse or domestic partner, your grandparent or your grandparent’s spouse or domestic partner, your grandchild or your grandchild’s spouse or domestic partner, or any person you are connected to like a family member.

The program also provides “safe leave” for survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, harassment or stalking who are in recovery.

Finally, Paid Leave Oregon provides protection from job loss. An employer cannot fire or threaten employees for taking time off to use paid leave.

If the position no longer exists upon one’s return from paid leave and one’s employer has more than 25 employees, the employer must provide a similar position. If the employer has fewer than 25 employees and the position is no longer available, a different position can be provided with similar job duties as long as benefits and pay remain the same.

Getting off the ground

As of Oct. 21, Paid Leave Oregon had approved nearly 18,000 applications and paid out more than $36 million in benefits.

Karen Madden Humelbaugh, the new program’s director, said the rollout has experienced “a few bumps” but overall has been relatively smooth.

“I think it’s been going very well, considering the fact that we were launching a brand-new benefits program, Paid Leave Oregon, at the same time we were launching a brand-new technology, the Frances portal,” the state’s name for the program website, she said.

One of the challenges in getting the program up and running was predicting how much demand there would be for benefits and calculating the amount of withholding needed to cover the costs of Paid Leave Oregon, which is required to be self-sustaining. So far, at least, the state’s predictions appear to be playing out as expected.

Payroll tax contributions are coming in within 5% of projections, she said, while claims for benefits are skewing heavily toward parental leave.

“They are aligning with what our forecasting was,” Humelbaugh said.

All of which means that Paid Leave Oregon is doing what it was designed to do, Humelbaugh added: allow Oregon workers to take time off work for health, family or safety reasons without suffering a devastating loss of income or losing their jobs.

“I think it’s providing that financial security for folks when they have these moments in their lives,” she said. “This program allows people to take that pause in their life so they can do what they need to do.”

Chris Grace is a program analyst for Paid Leave Oregon who covers all or parts of eight counties in Northeast and Central Oregon. In her travels around her territory, Grace said, she’s heard over and over again from people who have lived through situations where they needed to take time off work to care for loved ones but couldn’t afford to do so.

“They had to make a choice between going to work and family,” she said.

While the claims data on Paid Leave Oregon so far is limited, Grace said, one thing is clear: “This program is really, really needed, and people are accessing it.”

Making it work

But while some workers are singing the new program’s praises, others are grumbling about another deduction from their paychecks. And employers in both the public and private sectors are trying to figure out how to put it into practice without disrupting their operations.

Stacy Spriet, human resources director for Baker City, said she’s heard a range of comments on Paid Leave Oregon from the city’s workforce.

“I think a lot of them see it as another payroll tax, and people don’t really like more taxes,” she said. “But I try to frame it as it’s kind of like workers compensation. You might not need it, ever; however, it’s there for you to use.”

Spriet said the absence of an employee, depending on what department the individual works in, can cause short staffing and slower work completion.

Employees from other departments can sometimes pitch in to pick up the slack, depending on the job and what needs to be done, she added. The police and fire departments would just have to eat the cost of overtime and call in someone else to cover an absent worker’s shift.

Baker County’s human resources director, Heidi Martin, said the statement she hears from employees about Paid Leave Oregon is: “If I’m required to pay into it, then I might as well take advantage of it.”

Martin said county workers already had an option to take leave and, as long as they had enough time in their leave banks (sick, vacation, etc.), the time off would be paid until their bank was depleted and then it would turn into unpaid leave.

“The difference now,” she said, “is that for those employees who didn’t have the personal leave time before, now they will be able to receive some level of compensation throughout their entire period of leave, which may encourage employees to be away from the workplace longer.”

Coupled with the difficulty in filling vacant positions, that could make it extremely hard on the employer, Martin said — not to mention the employees who need to fill in the gap and help take on the duties of the person out on leave. That, she worries, could lead to burnout and potentially exacerbate the problem that already exists.

‘You do what you gotta do’

Back at the Inland Cafe, Christensen was thinking ahead to the day when she might need to apply for benefits. After years of working in the service industry, she said, she needs foot surgery and will have to take some time off work to recover.

She said she is glad to know Paid Leave Oregon will be there to help.

“It’s nice to have that,” she said, “especially for jobs that don’t have a lot of benefits.”

Cafe owner Kristi Hensley is taking a philosophical approach to the new program and how it might affect her business if one of her employees applies for leave.

For a short-term absence, Hensley said, she or her husband would simply fill in for the missing employee or get other workers to cover the person’s shifts.

But if one of her staff were to take the full 12 weeks of leave, Hensley said, she would need to hire a temporary employee.

With the difficulty in finding workers these days, “you do what you gotta do” to keep good people, she added.

“It’s there for a great reason,” Hensley said of Paid Leave Oregon. “We would just take care of things.”

Paid Leave Oregon: By the numbers

Applications received: 28,358

Applications approved: 24,046

Benefits paid: $55,548,631

Applications received, by county:

Baker: 68

Grant: 25

Morrow: 105

Umatilla: 555

Union: 166

Wallowa: 56

Washington, Oregon take different approaches to paid leave

KENNEWICK, Wash. — Washington has had a paid family and medical leave program in place since 2020.

But even though the two states are right next door to one another, there are some differences in the way Washington and Oregon administer their leave programs and what’s included under each one.

Eligibility in Washington is based on the number of hours worked in the year prior to a worker’s benefits claim instead of an earnings threshold.

Washington pays only up to 90% of a worker’s weekly pay, and the benefit amounts differ between the two states based on each state’s average weekly wages. Washington workers pay a larger share of the program compared to employers, at 72.76% versus 60% in Oregon.

Unlike Washington, Oregon doesn’t have a “waiting week” where people who qualify for benefits receive no pay until the second week of leave, though Washington waives the waiting week for child bonding and military deployment.

Washington provides a week of paid leave to spend time with family members in the military who are about to deploy overseas, which Oregon does not. On the other hand, Oregon offers “safe leave” for survivors of rape or domestic violence, a benefit Washington doesn’t provide.

Washington also offers up to 18 total weeks of leave if a claimant experiences a condition in pregnancy that results in incapacity, such as a Caesarean section or being put on bed rest. Job protection parameters also differ slightly between the two states.

Washington’s model reveals that paid family and medical leave programs don’t have to be static. Since Washington began accepting claims in January 2020, changes have been made to improve service delivery and expand coverage of qualifying events — for example, to include bereavement leave for the loss of a child when the applicant otherwise would have qualified for birth or bonding leave, such as in the event of a stillborn baby or miscarriage.

— Laura Kostad, for EO Media Group

Paid Leave Oregon: How to apply

The easiest way to apply for paid leave is via the Frances online portal at https://frances.oregon.gov/Claimant. The name honors Frances Perkins, America’s first female Cabinet member, who served as U.S. secretary of labor from 1933 to 1945.

Paper applications are available for those who don’t have internet access, and you can call a support line at 833-854-0166 for help.

If you know you will need to use paid leave, let your employer know at least 30 calendar days ahead of time, unless giving advance notice is not possible for you.

In an emergency, you must tell your employer (this does not have to be in writing) that you plan to use paid leave within 24 hours. Follow up with a written notice within three days after starting leave. If you do not give notice to your employer, this may reduce your first weekly benefit payment by 25%.

More information is available at paidleave.oregon.gov.