O’Reilly Auto Parts will pay a total of $163,458 to current and former Washington workers after the state discovered it illegally eliminated unused sick leave they had earned. 

Officials with the state’s Department of Labor & Industries discovered O’Reilly’s actions and began investigating in September 2023, according to a release. The investigation revealed that 2,327 employees at nearly 160 locations statewide were impacted when the company switched to a new payroll vendor at the end of 2022. 

The company has five locations in the Tri-Cities. 

State law requires employers to allow workers to carry over up to 40 hours of unused paid sick leave from one year to the next. 

Typically, the state would allow workers to choose whether to have their leave reinstated or receive a payout for the value of the leave. However, most of the workers in the case no longer work at O’Reilly so the state ordered the retailer to pay all the workers the value of the lost leave. 

“Washington workers should always get the money they’ve earned, and paid sick leave is part of a worker’s total compensation,” said Labor & Industries Director Joel Sacks in a release.