Oregon Court: Broad Definition of “Employee” for Minimum Wage Statute

Ater Wynne LLP
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Oregon Court of Appeals Adopts Broad Definition of “Employee” for Minimum Wage Statute

Last month, in Cejas Commercial Interiors, Inc., v. Torres-Lizama, the Oregon Court of Appeals adopted the “economic realities test” for determining whether an individual is an employee under Oregon’s minimum wage statute. The statute, ORS 653.025, provides that “no employer shall employ * * * any employee” at a wage lower than the “Oregon minimum wage.” A challenge for courts is to determine whether a worker is an employee of the purported employer.

Before last month’s ruling, trial courts in Oregon applied two different tests to determine whether an individual is an “employee” for purposes of the minimum wage statute. One test, called the “right-to-control test,” looks at whether the presumed employer has formal control over the individual workers. A second test, the one adopted by the Court of Appeals, focuses more broadly on whether “an entity has functional control over workers even in the absence of the formal control.” The goal of the economic-realities test is to determine whether, “as a matter of economic reality,” the worker is dependent on the alleged employer.

In Cejas Commercial Interiors, Inc., v. Torres-Lizama, the workers alleged that Cejas, a drywall contractor, was their employer while they did drywall work that Cejas had subcontracted to Viewpoint Construction, LLC. The workers sought compensation from Cejas when Viewpoint disappeared without paying them, claiming that Cejas and not Viewpoint was their employer. The Court of Appeals agreed with the trial court that, even applying the broader economic-realities test, the workers were not “employees” of Cejas, and therefore Cejas did not owe them minimum wages. The court found that Cejas “neither formally nor functionally controlled the terms and conditions of employment.” Further, the court found that the workers were not economically dependent on Cejas and Cejas was a “mere business partner” of the workers’ direct employer, Viewpoint.

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