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Oregon Fines Man For Writing a Complaint Email Stating 'I Am An Engineer' (vice.com)
pogopop77 quotes a report from Motherboard: In September 2014, Mats Jarlstrom, an electronics engineer living in Beaverton, Oregon, sent an email to the state's engineering board. The email claimed that yellow traffic lights don't last long enough, which "puts the public at risk." "I would like to present these facts for your review and comments," he wrote. This email resulted not with a meeting, but with a threat from The Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying [stating]: "ORS 672.020(1) prohibits the practice of engineering in Oregon without registration -- at a minimum, your use of the title 'electronics engineer' and the statement 'I'm an engineer' create violations." In January of this year, Jarlstrom was officially fined $500 by the state for the crime of "practicing engineering without being registered." Since the engineering board in Oregon said Jarlstrom should not be free to publish or present his ideas about the fast-turning yellow traffic lights, due to his "practice of engineering in Oregon without registration," he and the Institute for Justice sued them in federal court for violating his First Amendment rights. "I'm not practicing engineering, I'm just using basic mathematics and physics, Newtonian laws of motion, to make calculations and talk about what I found," he said. Sam Gedge, an attorney for the Institute for Justice, told Motherboard: "Mats has a clear First Amendment right to talk about anything from taxes to traffic lights. It's an instance of a licensing board trying to suppress speech."
Canada neither. You cannot call yourself an engineer in Ontario if you're not a member of the Professiona Engineers of Ontario. It doesn't matter if you have an engineering degree.
Just like you can't practice law or call yourself a lawyer in a province/state without having passed the bar exam even if you've passed law school.
Oregon hasn't been controlled by Republicans in 30 years. This is Democrats doing this shit.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The Oregon statute also defines what practicing engineering means under the law. The statutory definition, while overbroad, covers *working* as as engineer, not *saying* you're an engineer.
https://www.oregonlaws.org/ors...
1) "Practice of engineering" or "practice of professional engineering" means doing any of the following: ...
(a) Performing any professional service or creative work requiring engineering education, training and experience.
(b) Applying special knowledge of the mathematical, physical and engineering sciences to such *professional services* or creative work as consultation, investigation, testimony, evaluation, planning, design and services during construction
To any Oregon bureacrats who happen to be reading this:
I'm an engineer. I'm also a train conductor. And a unicorn. Fuck you, Oregon.
Knowing how citizens of the left coast tend to think, they'll decide that the solution to this abuse of an overbroad regulation by power-hungry bureaucrats is to create more regulations, to be wielded by more power-hungry bureacrats.
This is common language for most states; the title "engineer" is reserved, and representing yourself as one without being registered in the state you "practice" engineering is a violation.
So, yes-- he should pay the fine, and re-submit the letter with the word "engineer" blocked out, and demand to be heard.
Sadly, the same would be true if you represented yourself as a barber, at least in the state of California.
The point is there is regulatory recourse if you are licensed and are found negligent. That is a consumer (and public) safety issue of accountability. It is generally overblown in importance, but something is needed.
This is a travesty*, the shameful, traditional closing ranks of an organization to protect their own. He is lodging a complaint with the board about a potential safety issue. Even if his analysis was entirely without merit it deserves a more respectful response.
For the record: I am a licensed civil engineer (PE). I am no longer a practicing engineer (retired/inactive).
*I do think he should have gotten a note warning him about the legal ramifications of using the term "engineer". Most people don't know it requires licensing. Having a foreign engineering degree means he doesn't have any background with US licensing standards.
Even then it's stupid. Most of the engineers in the world are unlicensed. You only need a couple of PEs in most cases.
Of course these days the term is already worn as thin as kleenex and no stronger than jello. IMHO we (professional engineers) lost all claims of governance over the term "engineer" the day the engineering license boards didn't wage war over "sanitation engineer".
I've been on slashdot so long I'm starting to get out of touch with the cool stuff if it ain't on slashdot.
The governor of Oregon is a Democrat. The Democrats control both House and Senate.
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This is common language for most states; the title "engineer" is reserved, and representing yourself as one without being registered in the state you "practice" engineering is a violation.
No, it isn't. What's reserved is the title of Professional Engineer (PE), which he didn't claim to hold.