NFIB tells committee wage bill fundamentally holds the wrong party responsible for breaking the law.
State Director Anthony Smith reports from Salem on the small-business agenda for the legislative and political week ending March 10
It’s Day 53 of the 160-day 2023 Oregon Legislative Session which means we’re about one-third of the way to adjournment. The Legislature must finish its business no later than Sunday, June 25, this year – but it’s another deadline that will be the talk of the Capitol next week.
Friday, March 17 is the last day for most committee chairs to post a bill for a work session. Unless the bill has been assigned to a Rules committee, a Revenue committee, or a Joint committee, any bill that hasn’t already been “worked” in committee must be posted for a work session by 11:59 p.m. on Friday night or it will be officially dead for the remainder of the 2023 legislative session.
In the Oregon Legislature, a work session is the mechanism by which a committee takes action on a bill. That could mean adopting amendments, moving the bill to another committee, or passing the bill out of committee to the floor for a vote of the full chamber. Between Friday, March 17 and Tuesday, April 4, committees will be working vigorously to pass House bills to the House floor and Senate bills to the Senate floor. If a bill does not come out of committee to the floor of its chamber of origin by April 4, it too will be dead for the remainder of the session. Again, there are exceptions for bills assigned to Rules, Revenue, and Joint committees.
The practical reality of chamber deadlines is that a very large number of the nearly 3,000 bills introduced this year will not survive past April 4. It’s no accident that NFIB has scheduled our Small Business Day event for Tuesday, April 18. By then, we should have a clear picture of the bad bills that remain a threat – and what opportunities we might have to pass some good bills too!
OSHA Penalty Bill Passes the Senate
On March 8, the Oregon Senate passed SB 592, a proposal to increase penalties for violations issued by Oregon OSHA. The bill was amended in committee to address some of the concerns NFIB brought up in testimony that I referenced in the last update, but the amendment did nothing to make the penalty increases more reasonable.
NFIB issued our first Key Vote Alert of the session on SB 592. Here is an excerpt:
- The penalty increases are staggeringly high. Under current law, the minimum penalty that may be imposed upon a business for a serious violation is $50 – and as we learned during the public hearings when the bill was before the Senate Committee on Labor and Business, no business in Oregon currently pays less than $100 per serious violation, which is the minimum set by the division’s administrative rules.
- SB 592 A proposes to increase the minimum to $1,116 – more than $1,000 more than the current minimum. It’s also important to note how current statute describes a “serious violation”. ORS 654.086 states: “a serious violation exists in a place of employment if there is a substantial probability that death or serious physical harm could result from a condition which exists, or from one or more practices, means, methods, operations or processes which have been adopted or are in use, in such place of employment unless the employer did not, and could not with the exercise of reasonable diligence, know of the presence of the violation.”
- This means that a serious violation may occur, and thus a civil penalty may be imposed against the business, even if an accident has not happened, and when no one working at the business has been injured, because a violation exists solely on a “substantial probability that death or serious physical harm could result” from the violation.
- Furthermore, section 2 of the bill also creates very large penalty minimums of $20,000 (for a serious violation that causes or contributes to the death of an employee) and $50,000 (for willful or repeated violations that cause or contribute to the death of an employee). A $20,000 penalty may be considered a deterrent for a large corporation, but it could very well mean the end of a small business, which is an extremely unequitable outcome for the same violation.
The bill now moves to the Oregon House of Representatives for consideration. NFIB will be actively working to remove these penalty increases from the bill.
NFIB Opposes Diesel Phase-Out/Ban
On March 2, the Senate Committee on Energy and Environment held a public hearing on SB 803, which would phase out the sale of petroleum diesel over the next several years and completely ban it statewide by 2030. NFIB testified in opposition:
- NFIB opposes SB 803 primarily due to what we’ve learned from the COVID-19 pandemic regarding supply chain logistics. We found out the hard way that our economy was far more vulnerable to supply chain issues than most people originally thought.
- NFIB’s small business members in Oregon operate in every industry sector and approximately two-thirds of our members directly depend on a reliable and affordable transportation fuel supply chain to successfully run their businesses – to do things like operate vehicles, receive inventory, and ship products to customers.
- We’ve heard from fuel suppliers and our friends in the transportation industry that traditional fuel supply systems can’t simply be turned off and on at the touch of a button. We should take their warnings seriously because if we create policies that impose further hardships on our supply chain, we risk far more than empty shelves at the grocery store, especially during the next emergency situation, whatever that looks like in the future – hopefully not another pandemic.
The bill received a second public hearing on March 9, but as of March 10, it had not yet been scheduled for a work session. If a work session is not scheduled by the March 17 deadline, the bill would be dead for the remainder of session.
NFIB Opposes Construction Wage Claim Bill
On March 8, the House Committee on Business and Labor held a public hearing on HB 2057, which would make general contractors liable for the unpaid wages of their subcontractors. NFIB signed up to testify in opposition to the bill, but the chair cut the hearing short before the public (both proponents and opponents) could get their comments on the record. NFIB’s written testimony can be read here in its entirety. Here is an excerpt:
- As serious as the issue of unpaid wages is – and as much as we all want to go after the bad actors who take advantage of the system, the law must be even-handed. The state has an interest in both protecting workers, and those businesses that follow the law, which is why NFIB opposes HB 2057.
- Making one independent business liable for the unpaid wages of another is a dangerous precedent to set. At a time when general contractors are facing increased challenges to keep up with current demands for new housing construction, it seems counterproductive to adopt a policy that would further discourage builders from meeting the housing needs of their communities.
I went on to cite three specific bills that the Legislature has passed in the last six years to directly address this issue, before adding one more final comment:
- All of these bills enjoyed broad bipartisan support, but HB 2057 is not an approach NFIB can support because it fundamentally holds the wrong party responsible for breaking the law.
When the public hearing was abruptly cut short, the chair did not indicate whether he would be scheduling another meeting to finish hearing testimony from the public. Let’s hope this one falls prey to the March 17 deadline as well.
Previous Weekly Reports and Related Information
- February 15—NFIB Oregon Small Business Day, April 18
Photo snip courtesy of the Oregon State Legislature website
