April 15, 2013 — On April 12, 2006, Rep. Shemia Fagan, D-Portland, told her colleagues in the House that she had her best lunch date ever, as her dad drove from The Dalles to help her celebrate her admission to law school.
“That was the last time I ever saw him because two weeks later he collapsed and died of heart failure,” Fagan said.
She took a week off from work to take care of funeral arrangements in Eastern Oregon and grieve her father’s death.
“When I returned to work, I was terminated,” Fagan said.
On Friday, seven years to the date of her lunch date with her father, the Oregon House voted 40-18 to expand the Oregon Family Leave Act to include two weeks of unpaid leave for bereavement, mourning and funeral arrangements to make certain that what happened to Fagan won’t happen when other Oregonians lose a loved one.
House Bill 2950 keeps the total time off an employee can take under the Oregon Family Leave Act to 12 weeks, and other aspects remain intact, including a requirement that employees have worked six months. The leave act also only applies to companies with 25 or more employees.
The bill moves to the Senate where it passed two years ago but died in the House after it was blocked by conservative Democratic Rep. Mike Schaufler, who lost his primary bid last spring.
The bereavement period applies to spouses, children, grandparents and parents, and extends protections allowed under the 1995 Oregon Family Leave Act that allow employees to take unpaid leave for illness, injury, child birth or adoption.
Rep. Alissa Keny-Guyer, D-Portland, said currently, someone could have leave to take care of a dying mother in another state, but the Oregon Family Leave Act would not cover them if their mom died.
“The minute they die, you’re not protected,” Keny-Guyer said. “Most of the good employers already do this.”
The bill was amended from its original draft, which would have included time off for mental health counseling after a death. Keny-Guyer said that part of the bill clouded the intent of the bill — workers get two weeks, however they spend it, and if they do suffer from depression or incapacitation, they can provide their employer with a note from a doctor or therapist and get more time off under current law.
All Democrats and six Republicans supported HB 2950, which had two Republican co-sponsors: Rep. Jim Weidner, R-McMinnville, and Rep. Jim Thompson, R-Dallas, as well as Sen. Brian Boquist, whose Senate district encompasses their House districts.
But the remaining 18 Republicans opposed the bill, backed by Associated Oregon Industries and the National Federation of Independent Businesses, a lobbying group aligned with Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS and Koch Industries.
Associated Oregon Industries didn’t oppose bereavement leave as much as express broad complaints with the Oregon Family Leave Act, which already goes further than the federal leave act.
But the national group expressed opposition that the HB 2950 continues Oregon’s expanded definition of family beyond federal law to include domestic partnerships, giving gay Oregonians the right to take time off when a domestic partner dies.
The bill had otherwise wide support on the public record, including hospice organizations, the Oregon Law Center and Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, which quoted Bible verses from Ecclesiastes:
“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose, under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant; a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance.”
Reporter Christopher David Gray can be reached at [email protected].
Image for this story by Matt Ducke (CC BY-NC 2.0) via Flickr.
