Christine Thelen was quoted in a December 21 The Oregonian article titled “Oregon’s New Pay Equity Law Raises Prospects, Worries.” The article discusses Oregon’s Equal Pay Act that takes effect on January 1, 2019 and some of the prospects and worries related to the law. Though the legislation was approved in early 2017, the rules were not published until the end of November 2018, resulting in some companies feeling unprepared.
Christine Thelen, a Portland employment lawyer with Lane Powell, said the problem is that the Bureau of Labor and Industries has declined to provide comprehensive guidance on what a pay equity analysis should look like, how exhaustive it should be or how much it should cost.
“It doesn’t help if you don’t know exactly what you have to do to get this safe harbor, and we won’t know until these things get challenged what some of those parameters are going to look like,” she said “Just doing the audit isn’t enough. You need to take steps to redress the pay differential for the individual suing and have made substantial progress addressing it for everyone else in the same protected class.”