Voters appear to have picked civil rights attorney Christina Stephenson to serve as the next commissioner of the Oregon Bureau of Labor & Industries, a nonpartisan post. Stephenson nearly won the BOLI seat outright in the May primary, but she fell just shy of the majority she needed. That led to a run-off with Cheri Helt, a Bend restaurant owner and former Republican state representative.
The two candidates identified similar problems at the labor bureau but differed in their approach to solving them.
Both women viewed BOLI’s investigation backlogs as a top concern. The labor bureau is meant to be a civil rights watchdog, investigating Oregonians’ claims of discrimination at work, in housing, or in public accommodations. The agency also examines wage claims, which arise when workers are underpaid or don’t get a final paycheck on time.
The agency has a backlog of roughly 1,200 potential civil rights claims that have yet to be assigned to an intake officer in the Civil Rights division. BOLI said it takes about seven months to investigate civil rights complaints once assigned, and about five months to resolve wage claims.
“A person who has had their wages stolen — getting them the money that they are owed could be the difference between them making rent, being able to pay for groceries,” Stephenson said during the campaign....
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