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Hiring incentives set to become more complicated in Oregon near end of September


TriMet is currently offering $7,500 bonuses to new drivers, paid across 3 years once someone starts training (KATU Photo)
TriMet is currently offering $7,500 bonuses to new drivers, paid across 3 years once someone starts training (KATU Photo)
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An exception in Oregon law set to expire near the end of September will make it more difficult and expensive for employers to offer hiring incentives, including public and private employers, because Oregon’s pay equity law prohibits hiring incentives, like bonuses, unless current, comparable employees are given the same amount of money.

Hiring bonuses have been successful in helping employers, like TriMet, increase interest in their job openings. The transit agency started offering $2,500 hiring incentives last November and then bumped them to $3,500 in March and $7,500 in April.

“We really started to get people’s attention when we increased the bonus to $7,500,” TriMet public information officer Tia York said. “The hiring bonus has had a tremendous impact when it comes to the number of applications that we’re getting in.”


Since January, York said 1,850 people had applied for bus driver positions, though only 136 had been hired, and 68 made it through graduation as of early August.

Anthony Albright joined TriMet in January, attracted by the pay, his desire to drive, and the opportunity the wage gave him to one day own a home.

“When I joined it was $2,500, and now it’s $7,500 to join. That’s no small peanuts,” Albright said. “That’s a lot of money, so anybody who loves to drive and is interested, and they hear that $7,500, just think about it.”

The focus on hiring and recruitment is helping TriMet address what it called a historic driver shortage. The bonus is paid across three years, once drivers are hired and start training.

“For the most part we’ve seen rates of attrition — that’s resignations and retirement — outpace hiring. But in June 2022, hiring outpaced attrition for the first time at TriMet since the start of the pandemic. We’re really encouraged by that,” York said.

Police agencies, like the Portland Police Bureau, are also using hiring incentives. In late-June, Portland’s city council approved $25,000 hiring bonuses for current police officers with an Oregon certification, called a lateral hire. Nine officers are in the pipeline for that bonus.

The city is also offering $5,000 to people with no police experience, an offer 16 brand new officers took advantage of before swearing-in in late July.

Agency leaders said lateral hires get on the streets months before brand new hires and cost less money to train, leading to a potentially quicker and cheaper fix to a police bureau with around 100 vacancies. However, the $25,000 hiring bonus ends near the end of September. The ordinance approving the bonuses states the money must be paid out by September 27, before hiring incentives are once again classified as compensation.

During a tough job market, state lawmakers temporarily removed hiring incentives from the definition of compensation in House Bill 2818 in 2021 and then extended the exception in Senate Bill 1514 in 2022, but the the extension ends 180 days after Governor Kate Brown’s COVID state of emergency ended: September 28.

Due to Oregon law, Portland can only continue offering $25,000 to lateral hires after September 27 if it gives current Portland officers with the same experience a $25,000 dollar retention bonus, a far more expensive scenario. The police bureau’s $5,000 sign-on bonus can continue, because the city paid retention bonuses to current officers and employees that squares the sign-on bonus with Oregon’s pay equity law.

TriMet said it’s unsure what will happen with its $7,500 bonus after September 28, but the agency said whatever decision it makes would comply with state law. The bonus is paid out across three years.

Washington law allows companies to offer hiring incentives without paying current employees, so there is no similar deadline on September 28 in Washington.

KATU reached out to two lawmakers on the Senate Interim Committee on Labor and Business to ask whether the legislature would extend the deadline or permanently remove hiring incentives from the definition of compensation. The lawmakers’ offices did not respond.

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