This is the time of year when organizations and lobbyists plan for the 2007 legislative session. To prove value-added to their members and clients, a long list of potential disasters is highlighted.
While corporate executives and boards of directors hand out bonuses and see their stock values rise, and by and large celebrate the holiday season, their government affairs professionals are busy scurrying around to meetings and task forces and seminars learning what perils are in store for 2007. It’s a good thing the higher-ups don’t read these dire prognostications. They might cancel the end-of-the-year parties!
The odd little world of workers’ compensation is not immune to these forces. As people struggle to come to grips with the latest reports from the Commission on Health and Safety and Workers’ Compensation or the latest abomination from the courts or a comment by a newspaper pundit or a hiccup from a legislator, the call to “stay the course” becomes louder. After all, SB 899 was a unique situation, where the legislature did the right thing, but one should not expect that to happen any more frequently than the passing of Haley’s Comet.
The business community grumbles that workers’ compensation premiums are still too high. The subtleties of Oregon’s premium comparisons, the differences in workers’ compensation systems from one state to the next, and the relatively higher wages in California seem to get lost when someone says, “Yes, premiums have gone down – but look at how little they’re paying in Arizona!” Well, Mr. Businessman, that’s certainly true, but you might want to think about how little they pay in wages and benefits.
One oft-cited comment about the effects of minimum wage on premiums is a fine example of this disconnect. Memo to people who hire minimum-wage workers: If losses continue to decline and wages go up, the rate goes down. Do the math.
But we digress. SB 899 has taken on icon status over the past few years. One might expect a pilgrimage to, say, Nevada City, where someone dining at Friar Tuck’s gasps that an image of the bill was seen in a vat of bubbling fondue. All in the business community (and insurers for that matter, for those who think insurers are not businesses) have sworn a blood oath to preserve, protect and defend the reforms from “erosion” in Sacramento.
What about erosion that comes from not having a return-to-work policy?
To date, return-to-work “progress” has been measured by the frustration of multiple job offers at the end of a claim, lack of funding for workplace modifications for smaller employers, and a vague sense that somehow anti-discrimination actions under the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) are on the upswing.
Not all employees intend to become malingerers, and not all start out with applicants’ attorneys. Sometimes these relationships are born of frustration with the system.
Meanwhile, both labor and employers appear to give a collective yawn about other state and federal job training and placement programs offered by the Department of Rehabilitation and the Labor and Workforce Development Agency, to which millions of dollars are devoted annually.
Of course, lost in this discussion of all the things the laws can’t do is what employers can do to assist an injured worker in returning to the workforce. Unfortunately, one of the main reasons we had the vocational rehabilitation benefit and that we currently have the hodgepodge of state and federal vocational programs is that the economics of returning workers to work, both on a macro and micro level, have eluded the business community. The added costs of California’s version of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) – FEHA – are viewed as a litigation burden more than anything else.
Filing a workers’ compensation claim should not be tantamount to giving notice that you’re quitting your job. But in far too many cases that is exactly what happens.
Workers’ compensation means more than signing a premium check – regardless of the amount. The best way to keep SB 899’s reforms safe from the onslaught of challenges that would unwind it in a heartbeat is to help injured workers return to work – and that doesn’t require yet another set of laws to accomplish.
It does sometimes require a concerted effort by all concerned, including the injured worker and his or her counsel. But the effort is worthwhile.