Over 7,500 current and former employees of Multnomah County will receive notice of a class action wage settlement. A judge preliminarily approved the settlement and ordered notices to be mailed by August 25, 2022.
The settlement ends nearly three years of litigation. In January 2019 Multnomah County switched to a payroll system by Workday, Inc. Over the next several months union members noticed errors on their paychecks. Attorneys with Bennett Hartman then filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of five members of the Multnomah County Corrections Deputies Association. The lawsuit alleges thousands of employees were underpaid wages in violation of Oregon wage laws.
Multnomah County agreed to settle the lawsuit in April 2022 for a total value of approximately $2.5 million. As part of the settlement, Multnomah County will waive all outstanding wage overpayments caused by the Workday payroll system, re-report wages to PERS for any employees it knows were incorrectly paid, and contribute $1,999,000 to a settlement fund. The settlement covers members of nearly a dozen unions as well as some non-union employees. Each employee who does not opt out of the settlement will receive payment of at least $200.
More information about the settlement will be available beginning August 25, 2022 at www.MultnomahCountySettlement.com.
