Title: Legislative Director, California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO
Resume: Wei has been at the California Labor Federation since October 2000, first serving as public policy director and subsequently as legislative director beginning in 2003. She has served as the federation’s acting chief of staff since 2008. Previously, Wei worked as an advocate for the California Immigrant Welfare Collaborative. She also served as public policy director for the Northern California Coalition for Immigrant Rights.
Schools: Wei holds a bachelor of arts in political science and Asian American studies from UC Berkeley and a master’s in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Commissions: Commissions: In 2006, Angie Wei was appointed by the State Senate to serve on the California Commission on Health and Safety and Workers' Compensation and currently serves as the chair of the commission.

Wei is the face of labor for workers’ comp issues in California. She is frequently at the Legislature lobbying on comp issues, especially matters relating to medical treatment. Wei also sits on the Commission on Health and Safety and Workers’ Compensation, where she is the 2010 chairwoman and has been active on panels and working groups involving return-to-work and permanent disability.

What are the top three issues in workers’ comp today?  
Bringing some fairness into the PD rating system, restoring benefits; there was imbalance created in the 2004 reforms, which slashed Permanent Disability benefits by up to 70%, an unintended consequence of Schwarzenegger reforms. This can be addressed in either a regulatory or statutory manner. Medical treatment as a whole, especially the cost of and access to timely care for injured workers; it’s high time to review how medical provider networks are working in terms of access to care and to address concerns about timing to get a QME or AME overall profiteering in workers’ comp, whether medical, insurance companies, people looking for loopholes in the system to profit from it; this can be addressed either through statute or regulation. One issue is that of compounding drugs—whether you can to get out of a fee schedule. It’s a loophole you can drive a truck through. We’re working on a legislative proposal to close that loophole; worker’s comp is a deal between the employers and injured workers—those who make a profit are costing the injured workers and employers and we want it to be a pure system. We agreed to the notion in reforms of trying to take out transactional costs and efficiencies to get to a system that was more fair, efficient and effective. This was the goal of the ‘04 reforms, and none of them have been achieved. We need it to be an efficient and effective system for injured workers.