Oregon Family Leave Act (OFLA)

According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 89% of all civilian workers in the United States had access to unpaid family leave. Employees working for employers in Oregon are part of that key statistic, due to the enactment of the Oregon Family Leave Act (OFLA or Oregon FMLA), an important piece of state legislation in the field of employment law that seeks to provide job protection to employees.

In this guide, we will cover the details about the OFLA, Oregon Family Medical Leave Act (OFMLA), the conditions of paid and unpaid family leaves, and more.

The state law equivalent of Oregon FMLA laws is the OFLA. This state legislation enacted in 1995 requires employers of 25 or more employees to provide the latter with job-protected family leave (Family Leave Act Oregon) to care for themselves or their family members in cases of illness, injury, childbirth and adoption.

It is job-protected because employers are required to reinstate or return employees who take the OFLA leave to the same position that they held prior to taking the Oregon family leave, or to an equivalent position if the prior position held by the employee no longer exists. Not only that: employers must also continue providing health insurance benefits to employees who take OFLA leave throughout the period of the leave, as if their employees are still rendering service during the same timeframe.

The Oregon paid family leave is distinct, in addition to the sick time leave granted to workers under Oregon law, which is required to be paid by employers of 10 or more employees. 

The Family Leave Act Oregon serves to cater to a multitude of family-related needs of employees in recognition of the probability that, at some point along their employment, they may be required to leave their jobs in order to attend to a sheer number of possible emergencies.

The following are the allowed reasons recognized by law for taking paid family leave Oregon:

Entitlement to OFLA leave depends on whether the employee’s job tenure has reached the minimum period required by law, for each particular type of OFLA leave as described above.

New amendments to the OFLA have taken effect which provides more liberal requirements for OFLA entitlement with respect to employees who are re-employed after separation from employment or returning from work within 180 days after temporary cessation of scheduled work hours. In these cases, while they may not have met the required 180-day job tenure requirement at the time of their return to work, these employees are still entitled to OFLA leave if they were so entitled at the time of their separation or temporary work cessation.

The length of Oregon FMLA leave is generally 12 weeks within any one year period, and thus not necessarily within a one year period. However, additional periods of leave on top of the 12-week period are allowed under the following scenarios:

Note that when OFLA-eligible employees fully avail of the 12-week leave period under FMLA Oregon (Federal Family and Medical Leave Ac), they also fully exhaust their entitlement to 12-week leave. 

This means that employers in Oregon who may be covered both by the state law (FMLA Oregon) and federal law (FMLA) are not automatically required to give a total of 24 weeks of leave, or 12 weeks under OFLA plus 12 weeks under FMLA. The general rule, therefore, is that the employees of such OFLA- and FMLA-covered employers are only entitled to 12 weeks of family-related leave. Once an employee consumes their entire 12-week leave during the year, whether under OFLA or under FMLA, he or she will no longer have any OFLA and FMLA leave credits for the remainder of the year.  

There are exceptions, however, to this general rule. Among the exceptions is when the employee avails of OFLA leave to take care of a family member with a serious health condition. Because this kind of leave is only available under OFLA and not under FMLA, the employee who avails of the same OFLA leave for 12 weeks in a year does not lose his or her entitlement to FMLA leave because such OFLA leave may not be possibly counted toward the FMLA entitlement. In such a case, the employee continues to retain his or her 12-week FMLA leave entitlement.

Under the law, while OFLA leaves remain to be unpaid leaves, employees eligible must be permitted to use any existing accrued paid leave, including sick leave, vacation leave or any paid leave offered in lieu of vacation leave. This means that an employee need not avail of the OFLA leave to attend to an OFLA-related reason when other forms of leaves are available.

However, despite that option, it is generally the employers who are given the discretion as to what type of leave must be availed of. Thus, under the law, employers can require that employees who want to avail of OFLA leave use instead their accrued paid leave. Moreover, employers can also dictate the order in which the leave is to be used as long as it is consistent with a collective bargaining agreement or other written agreement between the employee and the covered employer or is consistent with an employer policy. Nonetheless, to protect the employee who is subjected to this discretion by the employer, the law requires the employer to provide written notice to the employee that they are to take accrued paid leave during the planned OFLA leave.

This discretion, however, is not available to employers with respect to employees availing of the OFLA military family leave. In this case, it is the employee, not the employer, who may dictate the order in which the leaves are to be used.

Under OFLA, each of both parents may avail of the full 12-week OFLA leave. However, with respect to OFLA parental leave, employers are not required to allow both parents who work for the same employer to take said leave at the same time, unless the reason for the leave is that either of the parent or any of their children is suffering from a serious health condition.

The law allows employers to require employees who wish to avail of an OFLA leave to give written notice up to 30 days prior to the day when the OFLA leave is to commence. However, the 30-day notice may not be required if the OFLA leave is taken as a result of an emergency or unforeseen event, in which case the employer is still entitled to notice but only as soon as the giving of notice is practicable but not later than 24 hours after the OFLA leave commenced.

Employers are also allowed to require a separate notice to be given within three days when the employee is to return to work after having availed of OFLA leave.

Finally, the law also allows employers to undertake disciplinary measures against employees who fail to give the required written notice as discussed above.

The law gives employers the right to require medical verification as to whether there really exists a need for OFLA leave taken for the care of an employee’s sick child. This right to have a medical verification on the part of the employer kicks in when the same employee has availed of the OFLA sick child leave for the fourth or any subsequent time within the same year.

The OFLA leave is one of the most important laws in the state of Oregon, as it provides ample protection to job security of employees and gives employees the gift of protected time off to take care of themselves and their family members.