BOLI: $35M Budget to Create Jobs and Protect Workers

Job training is vital for rural Oregon, because a skilled workforce is necessary for  robust economies, sound infrastructure, and atrractive communities. The Labor Commisioner directs the Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI), which is an instrumental agency for training and protecting the rights of rural workers.

All Oregon voters, even if not affiliated with a political party, may vote for the Labor Commissioner during the  May 17 election. If one candidate received more that 50% of the vote, that candidate wins. Otherwise, the two top candidates will square off in the November election.

Voting (or not voing) has consequences, so please VOTE!

Salem Statesman Journal ("Election 2022: Meet the candidates for Oregon labor commissioner")

Oregon voters will be choosing a key enforcer of workers’ rights this year. Whoever wins the race for labor commissioner will be in charge of an agency with a $35 million budget and more than 100 employees.
The Bureau of Labor and Industries enforces wage and hour claims and other worker protections. It also supports apprenticeship programs for Oregonians seeking job training and enforces protections against discrimination in housing and public places.
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Eight people are trying to become labor commissioner this year. These are the candidates:

Aaron Baca, reforestation company owner

Baca, of Cornelius, says that as a contractor and former electrician he understands both the struggles of small businesses and what it’s like to be part of a union. When he relocated to Oregon from California, he says it was too difficult for him as a journeyman electrician to get qualifications to do similar work in Oregon.
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Baca said he has not managed a budget of BOLI’s size but that he has worked as a manager.

Brent Barker, real estate broker

Barker, of Aloha, could not be reached for comment by deadline.

On his website, he says his campaign “will work with business and labor to encourage and promote high paying jobs to Oregon; protect workers’ rights and improve Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) social media public service ratings.” His website also says he wants to work with schools to “enhance” job training.

Cheri Helt, former state legislator and restaurant owner

Helt, a restaurateur and former state lawmaker from Bend, cites her experience as a legislator, business owner and school board member as qualifications. As a member of the Bend-La Pine School Board, Helt said she worked to pass Measure 98 in 2016, which dedicated state money to career and technical education.
“We now have a designated line item in our budget for career and technical education to high schools,” Helt said. “But what we haven't done is really captured the pipeline from those career and technical education programs into high-paying jobs.”
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Helt also points to her experience running a business, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, when businesses had to adapt to rapidly changing regulations.
She says she also wants to use her understanding of state laws to work on workforce housing issues. Oregonians across the state struggle to afford housing, especially in Bend, an outdoors town with a booming real estate market.

Chris Henry, truck driver

At midnight on Sept. 9, 2021, Henry, who has been a Teamsters freight truck driver for 18 years, pulled off the highway to file to run for Labor Commissioner the first minute that registration opened.
That ended up not working, and he had to wait until he got home. He and one other candidate, Robert Neuman, filed on Sept. 9, according to Secretary of State records. The perennial candidate – who says he also has run for governor, treasurer, attorney general, Congress and the Tualatin Valley Water District – is now looking to help his fellow workers as labor commissioner.
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Henry said. He wants to see a higher minimum wage, which he says he would use a statewide platform as labor commissioner to advocate for, and wants to require companies to provide diversity training.
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Casey Kulla, county commissioner and farmer

As a county commissioner in Yamhill County since 2019, Kulla says he has worked with a range of people with varying political beliefs to improve government services, and wants to bring that skillset to statewide leadership.
For instance, when the state-mandated vaccines for health care workers, he helped the county come up with an agreement – over the course of many hours of discussion – that Kulla said was respectful of the workers but also complied with the mandate.
He thinks that BOLI can better inform Oregonians of their rights.
In recent years, the state Legislature has passed new policies enshrining new protections for workers, like requiring overtime for farmworkers and creating a new program for people to take paid family and medical leave when they welcome a new child or care for a sick loved one. BOLI has the responsibility for enforcing those rights.
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Kulla says he also wants the agency to step up its enforcement of apprenticeship programs and wage and hour laws. In early 2021, the Oregon Center for Public Policy published research finding that Oregon businesses paid penalties to the state in only 1% of cases where a worker’s wage theft claim was found to be valid.
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And Kulla wants to figure out how to reduce the workload for the agency's civil rights investigators. The bureau gives equal priority to each case, and the pandemic has also resulted in high workloads per worker, Kulla said. He said addressing that might mean increasing the number of workers the agency has to do that work, but also could mean providing investigators withtechnological tools to do their jobs more efficiently.
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Robert Neuman, worker from Baker County

Neuman, who says he works to help manage businesses, says his basic platform is that it should be easier for workers to apply for jobs. He believes the Bureau of Labor and Industries is underfunded and doesn’t have enough workers.
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Asked if there was anything he would change about the agency, he said that he would wait until he was elected to decide what needed to be changed.
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Christina Stephenson, civil rights lawyer

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Having long been interested in public policy, Stephenson researched the law and learned that other Oregon workers could be fired if they took time off to grieve a loved one. So she mobilized the members of her grief support group to advocate at the state capitol for changing the law in 2013.
Since then, Stephenson has provided feedback on legal language in bills that have become state laws, like the new program to provide paid family and medical leave to people who have just had a child or are taking care of a loved one, and a measure to promote equal pay.
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Stephenson says she has a good understanding of what it’s like to run a small business and worry about making payroll, too.
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Stephenson says that overall, the bureau has half the workers that it did 40 years ago and she wants the agency to be strategic about how and where it spends money and enforces workplace protections. Part of that could involve using data to see which industries are least compliant.