As the new year approaches, a number of states will see index-driven increases to their minimum wage rates. Specifically, Arizona, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington will each add around 10 cents per hour to their existing wage rates, based on an increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) of a little more than one percent from August 2009 to August 2010. Two other states, Florida and Missouri, have chosen not to adjust their indexed wages.

In Arizona, the state minimum wage will increase from $7.25 to $7.35 per hour and will remain at that rate throughout the next year. Tipped employees’ hourly wages also will increase 10 cents, from $4.25 to $4.35. The new minimum wage must be posted in an area where employees can read the poster, such as the break room.

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by Calvin Keith, Perkins Coie

For over 10 years, Oregon employers have been waiting for an answer to the question of whether they must accommodate a disabled worker’s use of medical marijuana. The Oregon Supreme Court’s April 14 decision in Emerald Steel Fabricators, Inc. v. Bureau of Labor and Industries answers that question with a resounding NO.

Emerald Steel terminated a temporary employee who, during the process of seeking permanent employment, disclosed that he used medical marijuana two to three times a day. The company said it didn’t have to accommodate a claimed disability by allowing the employee to use illegal drugs. It argued that position unsuccessfully before the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries and the Oregon Court of Appeals.

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The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recently filed its third sexual harassment case in less than a year against Oregon agricultural employers. The most recent suit charges that sexual harassment and retaliation occurred at Willamette Tree Wholesale, a retail nursery with 140 acres of farmland and a garden supply store in Molalla, Oregon, where Latina workers were allegedly sexually harassed and threatened, and at least one woman was repeatedly raped.

Regarding the case, EEOC Regional Attorney William R. Tamayo said, “From California, where the fields were called ‘field de calzon’ (or ‘field of panties’) because so many supervisors raped women there, to Florida, where female farm workers call them ‘The Green Motel,’ and throughout the country, we have found women working in agriculture are often particularly vulnerable to sexual harassment. We hope this third Oregon lawsuit will send notice to employers in this industry to stop predatory sexual behavior and abuses of supervisor power.”

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