Agriculture and business groups have convinced Oregon lawmakers to revise a labor lawsuit bill, reducing the impact on employers in the version recently signed into law.

Workers accusing their employers of harassment or discrimination currently face a 90-day deadline to file lawsuits if the state’s Bureau of Labor and Industries takes no action after an investigation.

Proponents of House Bill 2957 want to scrap the 90-day deadline, arguing workers should be allowed to file complaints for the full five-year statute of limitations, instead of effectively being penalized for seeking BOLI’s help.

Many cases are not investigated by BOLI within the year they must be evaluated by the agency, yet still face a curtailed time frame for going to court, proponents said.

However, agriculture and business groups argued the proposal would harm small and mid-sized employers, who’d face a longer period of uncertainty and potentially hire lawyers to prepare for threatened litigation.

“It increases anxiety for our members. It increases costs substantially,” said Jenny Dresler, lobbyist for the Oregon Farm Bureau. “Just to settle out a claim and have an attorney can cost between $50,000 and $75,000.”

The expense of actually taking a case to trial can run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, but HB 2957 originally extended the litigation deadline even for complaints that BOLI determines to be unfounded, Dresler said.

“For Oregon farm and ranch families, they typically don’t have lawyers on staff,” she said.

Earlier this year, the Oregon House passed a version of the bill that would have eliminated the 90-day deadline and subjected all cases to the full five-year statute of limitations, even if BOLI did not find evidence to support the allegations.

In an amendment to HB 2957 that farm and business groups negotiated in the Senate, though, a lawsuit must be filed within just one year in cases where BOLI did not find evidentiary support for the allegations.

“There were questions about, why do we have a five-year statute of limitations when BOLI determines there was nothing wrong in the case?” said Kathleen Taylor, D-Portland.

The amended version of the bill was recently passed by the Senate, re-approved by the House and signed into law by Gov. Tina Kotek.

“The final version represents a compromise that addressed concerns expressed by farmers and others in the business community,” while still improving access to courts for workers, said Rep. Travis Nelson, D-Portland, the bill’s chief sponsor.

The revised language did gain some bipartisan support, including from Sen. Dan Bonham, R-The Dalles, who voted in its favor in the Senate Labor and Business Committee and on the Senate floor.

Bonham said he appreciated that bill sponsors were willing to negotiate with Republicans on the proposal, adding that it’s appropriate to expand the time limit for cases that BOLI did not have time to investigate.

“I am going to support what I feel is a balance of perspectives coming together and trying to do something positive,” he said.

Rep. Lucetta Elmer, R-McMinnville, said she realizes that several opponents had shifted to neutral on the bill due to the amendment but disagrees with extending the litigation deadline from 90 days to a year for cases BOLI deems unfounded.

“The fact remains that upstanding businesses that have done nothing wrong will now have an additional 9 months to worry about defending themselves in court against invalid claims,” Elmer said.

Some of the bill’s early supporters soured on the revised language, arguing the amendment only offered a “marginal improvement over the terrible situation workers are currently in,” according to the Northwest Workers Justice Project.

It’s a “false premise” that BOLI investigations actually give complaints “a fair shake,” as the agency handles too many cases to deeply probe each one, said Kate Suisman, an attorney with the organization.

As it stands, only 11-16% of the complaints received by BOLI are found to be supported with evidence, which indicates the agency is not pursuing legitimate claims because it’s “under-resourced” or unaware of “dynamics in low-wage jobs,” she said in written testimony

“They over-rely on the written word provided by employers, instead of worker testimony,” Suisman said. “They often do not conduct relevant witness interviews.”