FOSTERING SYNERGISTIC PARTNERSHIPS

Meet Oregon Employment Department’s David Gerstenfeld

Oregon’s hospitality industry is reliant on a steady stream of potential workers to feed an increased demand for service from our restaurant and lodging operations around the state. It’s critical our association and the Oregon Hospitality Foundation maintain collaborative partnerships with organizations and agencies in order to help rebuild our industry’s workforce pipeline.

We spoke with David Gerstenfeld, acting director of the Oregon Employment Department (OED) recently to learn more about how his organization intersects with the Leisure and Hospitality sector.

You have a law degree and bachelor’s degree in psychology. What drew your interest to working for the state’s employment agency?

Most of my professional career has been in public service, something I find deeply fulfilling. It has also focused on employment law – which was a significant part of my private law practice. Since then, I have worked with a number of workplace programs at the Bureau of Labor and Industries, the Office of Administrative Hearings, and the Employment Department.

Work is such a major part of our lives. It is how we provide for ourselves and our families and how we spend so much of our time and energy. Work can either be something that elevates us, providing purpose and opportunity, or it can be a source of additional stress and pressure. It has the opportunity to fundamentally change people’s lives. The relationship between workers and businesses is central to the well-being of individuals our businesses, and economy.

The Employment Department has a huge impact on the lives of businesses, individual workers, their families, and entire communities. Being part of that has been incredibly meaningful. I work with an exceptional group of inspiring, talented, and dedicated people. It’s extremely rewarding to be part of a team that is so dedicated to helping Oregon businesses and workers. receive federal tax credits for hiring people, potentially allowing the business to make more competitive wage offers.

Oregon’s private sector job vacancies are historically high following the pandemic. Leisure and Hospitality recorded 11,798 vacancies in the Fall of 2022, second highest behind healthcare. What role can the OED play in helping hospitality businesses build back their workforce? WorkSource Oregon Business Service teams deliver a robust package of customized services to match quality candidates to employers. We begin by building a strong relationship between an employer and their WorkSource Business Service Representative through site visits where we consult with the employer to gain insight into their specific business needs and help them start planning for recruitment. Our business service teams partner with our job seeker service teams to host in-person and virtual job fairs that expand outreach to the talent pool, increase applicant flow, and offer on-the-spot interviews.

Data available through our qualityinfo.org website gives employers valuable information about the local workforce so they can make informed decisions about pay rates and other key factors in recruiting and retaining workers. We also share information about hiring incentives, tax breaks or credits, and we serve as a liaison to other helpful programs, like rapid response, disabled access credit, Work Share, and our newly updated Work Ready program. We can certify employers for Work Opportunity Tax Credits, so they

The Work Ready program is designed to identify and promote validated job seekers directly to employers to expedite their employment. This program ensures these jobseekers are connected to valuable resources and are ready-for-hire by local employers. Wrap around services from WorkSource Oregon provide employment retention services, rapid response layoff aversion, and Work Share that can help keep Oregonians working. This combined service method has proven especially valuable in connecting jobseekers who are returning, or entering the workforce, to in-demand industries like leisure and hospitality.

Work Share is a wage replacement program that offers employers an alternative to workforce layoffs when business is slow. It gives eligible employees a portion of their regular unemployment insurance benefit, and it allows employers to keep their talented workers. Struggling businesses can use Work Share to supplement pay and benefits to compensate for the reduced wages.

We are in a very tight labor market, and most employers are having difficulty finding as many employees as they would like. The Employment Department understands that leisure and hospitality businesses were particularly hard hit by the pandemic, and we have these valuable tools, and connections with other workforce partners, that can help employers find and develop their workforce.

Oregon’s WorkSource Centers provide employers with connections to job candidates. How does OED interact with these centers to provide needed resources to benefit all industries?

WorkSource Oregon is a statewide partnership between the Oregon Employment Department and other state, local, and nonprofit agencies. We provide a variety of employment and training services to job seekers and employers in Oregon. We serve Oregonians because we believe in creating communities where the employment needs of job seekers and businesses are met by solutions delivered efficiently through engaged workforce system partners. Some of the principles that guide our work include integrity, stewardship, and teamwork.

Our Business Services staff function as an integral part of our WorkSource Oregon center teams, and they serve as an extension of an employer’s HR team. In addition to access to the statewide labor exchange system, iMatchSkills, our employees use other resources, like LinkedIn recruiting tools, to help employers find workers. Through LinkedIn, we create and promote job listings to expand the pool of potential candidates and fill employers’ vacant positions swiftly. We also feature job-finding tips, workforce development articles, and success stories within the #TalentTuesday feature for Pride in Food Service Week to stay engaged with our followers.

Business services available through WorkSource Oregon can dramatically impact an employer’s recruitment success by connecting directly to the available talent pool. This leads to improved quality of candidates, a smaller number of referrals to the employer, and reduction in staff turnover for the employer. The value-add for employers is they interview fewer candidates, take less time to fill the position, with an easier selection process and reduced hiring costs. This also allows employers time to focus on their core business functions rather than the interruptions that come with current hiring efforts.

HB 3389 (passed in 2021) provided pandemic tax relief for Oregon employers while protecting the Unemployment Insurance Tax Fund. What are some longterm impacts this legislation will provide for businesses?

This bill was really an exceptional collaboration – bipartisan, bicameral legislation that won the support of the business community, including ORLA, and worker representatives. It offered something for every employer, letting employers defer some of their unemployment insurance (UI) tax payments, providing more than $43 million in UI tax relief to Oregon employers in 2021, and ensuring that the unprecedented claims during the pandemic will not hurt employers’ UI tax rates. It also made some important, forward-looking changes to the statutes that guide Oregon’s already elegant UI Trust Fund.

These long-term changes adjusted the statutory formula that Oregon uses to maintain a solvent UI Trust Fund. The goal was to limit taxes for employers so they could recover while not basing long-term solvency targets on conditions during the pandemic. It adjusted the formula to take a longer view, accounting for the new types of economic cycles that were not anticipated when the statutes were originally written. These reforms let Oregon’s self-balancing formula continue to work as the economy changes while keeping tax rates predictable for employers that have weathered the pandemic.

The net result of these reforms will be more than $2 billion in UI tax relief for Oregon businesses through 2029. And it is working well – Oregon’s UI Trust Fund is already prepared for the next recession, and we are in the second lowest possible set of UI tax rates. Other states have pushed their regular UI tax rates to high levels to replenish their trust funds, and some are piling up additional taxes or missing out on federal tax credits because they had to borrow money for their trust funds. Meanwhile, Oregon’s UI Trust Fund is earning interest that reduces employer taxes. During the last quarter of 2022 alone, our trust fund earned more than $22 million in interest. That money stays in Oregon’s UI Trust Fund and helps keep all employers’ tax rates lower.

You head up the Modernization Program at OED. What are the program’s goals? What milestones have been achieved that will benefit small businesses in the long run? The goals of our modernization projects are to create flexible systems that improve access to our programs and allow us to quickly adapt to our customer's needs. We’re working to provide more modern and personalized services to businesses and job seekers –things like online self-service and mobile technology that help them do business with us in convenient and secure ways. It is all about focusing what we do around what the businesses and workers we serve need.

Our new system, Frances, rolled out September of 2022 and allows small business owners and self-employed individuals to connect to their account by phone, tablet or computer in both English and Spanish. Customers can file their combined payroll report, including both unemployment insurance and Paid Leave contributions, using Frances Online. They can also quickly access and make changes to their account information, get answers to their questions, and submit secure messages to our staff. We are proud to have worked with the Department of Revenue to meet the most common request we heard from employers – to incorporate the Statewide Transit Tax filing into other filing processes so it is more convenient for employers. We did that early this year and continue to look for more ways to make things easier for Oregon businesses.

Beginning September 2023, business owners will have self-service options related to their employees’ Paid Leave benefits claims, including receiving and responding to claim notices and adjudication requests for information, and in March 2024, the system will support the same for unemployment insurance claims.

Looking ahead, we have already started on modernization of our workforce systems. By 2026, we will be rolling out updated and improved services that connect business owners with people looking for jobs.

ORLA, OREGON EMPLOYMENT DEPARTMENT