Workers’ Comp Claims Information Navigable Online

November 22nd, 2009

This article by Timothy W. Emery, Esq., a partner with Emery Reddy, PLLC, Attorneys at Law.

Washington Labor and Industries is in the process of overhauling their website, www.lni.wa.gov.  The revisions to the Washington L & I website are the result of user feedback collected over a significant period of time and the efforts of the Washington L&I website designers.   The new look improves the homepage, streamlines navigation and uses space more efficiently.

The new Washington L&I homepage, content of which focuses specifically on injured workers’ employment and workers’ compensation rights, provides better visuals and a more welcoming portal to the rest of the L&I site.  Online services like the Claim and Account Center simplify the search for injured workers’ rights and remedies, workers’ compensation information, and specific claim information.

Streamlined navigation was a major focus on the L & I site revisions, and the result is a menu that includes headings for Safety, Claims and Insurance, Workplace Rights, and Trades and Licensing.  These headings are continuously available.  The new L&I site also restricts view to exactly what a workers needs, and little else.  An injured worker pursuing a claim will have a much easier time reviewing his or her workers’ compensation and Washington L & I rights, understanding workers’ comp injury data and statistics, verifying workers’ comp coverage, and completing insurance forms.  Better, these changes appear to be here to stay.

The new L&I website makes the most of its available space by consistently packaging information into succinct titles and removing duplication of information, such as contact information and Spanish translation for non-ESL workers.

Of the revisions, one of the most effective revisions to the L&I site is a new tool that permits a site user, commonly a worker with an L&I covered injury, to maintain a set of links packaged specifically for that worker.   For example, a worker who suffered a back injury at work could build links and bookmarks about necessary claim information, PPD awards related specifically to the worker’s injury, relevant contact information, and appeal information, should the workers’ case be required to be appealed to the Washington Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals—and these links would remain available regardless of where on the site the use surfed.  A review of the new site is available at http://www.lni.wa.gov/refresh.

Previously, an injured worker in need of advice might navigate the site without access to important links from the L&I homepage at every page in the L&I website.  New content and links refer an injured worker directly to information about pursuing claims or appeals for their injury.

Please visit Emery Reddy, PLLC online, or contact us via telephone at (206) 442-9106.

Emery Reddy represents plaintiffs in L & I, employment law and personal injury matters.  The firm and its attorneys are trusted advocates for Washington workers who experience job related injuries.

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Low-Wage Workers’ Rights Regularly Violated

November 20th, 2009

This article by Timothy W. Emery, Esq., a partner with Emery Reddy, PLLC, Attorneys at Law.

Low-wage employees are often denied appropriate overtime pay and paid less than the minimum wage, according to a study based on a survey of employees in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. Researchers responsible for the study found that 68 percent of the interviewed workers had experienced one or more pay-related violation in the previous work week.

The study, said to be the most extensive examination of wage-law violations in a decade, was born from efforts and financing by several foundations, including Ford, Russel Sage, Haynes and Joyce Foundations and researched by individuals, including Ruth Milkman, a sociology professor at the University of California.

4,387 workers were included in the study and many were found to have been the victims of various low-wage industries, including clothing manufacturing, and discount retailing. The average worker had been cheated out of 15% of their pay, or $51 out of their weekly earnings of $339, as a result of wage violations in the week prior to the study.

The study revealed that employers were successful in pressuring workers not to file for workers’ compensation—one of the most appalling findings in the study, according to researchers. 8% of those who suffered on-the-job injuries or other work related injuries, were pressured not to file for workers’ compensation to pay for medical care, treatment of the work-related injuries, or compensation for missed days at work stemming from such injuries. In circumstances when workers’ compensation should have been available to injured workers, a third of workers injured on-the-job were forced to pay bills to medical providers out-of-pocket and 22 percent were forced to use their own health insurance. The study revealed that workers’ compensation insurance paid for legitimate medical expenses from on-the-job injuries for only 6 percent of the injured workers surveyed.

Commonly held beliefs previously dictated that such tactics and violations were confined to a few outlying bad employers and that such tactics were used on disadvantaged employees or undocumented workers and immigrants. However, only 39 percent of the workers surveyed were illegal immigrants, 31 percent legal immigrants, and 30 percent native-born Americans. Said Nik Theodore, an author of the study and a professor of urban planning and policy at the University of Illinois, Chicago.  “What the study shows is that these practices are a widespread phenomenon across the low-wage labor market in the United States.”

Researchers also discovered that 26 percent of the workers were paid less than the minimum wage the week before being surveyed and that one in seven had worked without pay at some point during the week prior to the study. 76 percent of overtime workers were not paid their proper compensation the week before the study.

The study, entitled “Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers,” was conducted in 2008, before the impact of the recession, and when minimum wage in California, New York was $8 and $7.15 an hour, respectively. More than 75% of the workers surveyed earned less than $10 an hour. The study found that women are more likely than men to be victims of minimum wage violations and that the highest incidence of wage law violations occurs among young female illegal immigrants.

Also evident from the study was a common employer tactic of withholding mandatory pay documents, which if otherwise provided would tend to ensure that pay is accurate.  57 percent of interviewees had not received mandatory pay documents the previous week. For those workers who receive tips, 12 percent said some of their tips were actually stolen by their employers.

Retaliation was also found to be rampant. One in five workers reported launching complaints about their wages to their employer or trying to form a union in the previous year, and 43 percent of those workers experienced some form of illegal retaliation, like firing or suspension, the study said.

Many small businesses say they are forced to violate wage laws to remain competitive. Another project author, Annette Bernhardt, was outspoken in condemning such practices, “These practices are not just morally reprehensible, but they’re bad for the economy. When unscrupulous employers break the law, they’re robbing families of money to put food on the table, they’re robbing communities of spending power and they’re robbing governments of vital tax revenues.”

Please visit Emery Reddy, PLLC online, or contact us via telephone at (206) 442-9106.

Emery Reddy represents plaintiffs in L & I, employment law and personal injury matters.  The firm and its attorneys are trusted advocates for Washington workers who experience job related injuries.

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Employers Pressure Workers – “Don’t Report Your Injury!”

November 17th, 2009

This article by Timothy W. Emery, Esq., a partner with Emery Reddy, PLLC, Attorneys at Law.  www.emeryeddy.com

A new and alarming report by the auditing arm of Congress, the G.A.O., states that many employers do not report workplace injuries and illnesses. Employers, concerned with increasing their workers’ compensation and L & I costs and losing contracts, are more frequently concealing workplace injuries or pressuring employees not to report injuries.

The G.A.O said that 53 percent of health practitioners had reported experiencing pressure from company officials to downplay injuries or illnesses, and that 47 percent had reported experiencing this pressure from co-workers. In one documented case, a manager took an injured worker to a number of doctors until the manager found one willing to certify the injury as being treatable only with first aid, thus making it an injury that does not require reporting.

The report also questioned whether workers were forced to conceal their job-related injuries because they feared employer retaliation. “This report confirms that when it comes to the documenting of workplace injuries, we can’t just take employers at their word,” said Washington Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington and chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety. “The system, to this point, has been all too easy to game.”

The report discussed other factors that lead to underreporting, such as the fear that an injury, once reported, might negatively affect an employee’s co-workers. This fear is justified when an employer’s bonus structure is specifically designed to create a peer-pressure atmosphere for underreporting injuries. An example of such a structure is to reward all employees with bonuses when few injuries are reported, and withdraw bonuses when injuries are reported. Employers often refer to these programs as “Safety Incentive Programs,” but they act as deterrents for the reporting of real injuries, especially when an injured worker knows that her injury will be the tipping point that causes all employees to lose their bonuses.

“The widespread underreporting so clearly documented in this report is undermining the health and safety of American workers,” said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa and chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. “If we don’t know the full extent of the workplace hazards workers face, we cannot fully address these risks.”

Washington workers can minimize these risks by understanding their right to report injuries free from the threat of employer retaliation. The Workers’ Compensation system currently in place under Title 51 is a “no fault” system, which means that the only issues at hand are whether the worker is injured, as evidenced by the employee’s primary treating physician’ and whether the injury actually occurred at work. Additionally, remedies exist for an injured worker when the employer retaliates as a result of the worker reporting the injury. Such remedies include attorney’s fees which may be awardable when the retaliation is deemed to be discriminatory.

Emery Reddy is located on the Internet at www.emeryreddy.com and can be contacted via telephone at (206) 442-9106.

Emery Reddy represents plaintiffs in L & I, employment and injury matters.  The firm and its attorneys are trusted advocates for Washington workers who experience job related injuries.

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New Jersey Law Journal – Workers’ Compensation System: A Poster Child for Health Care Reform

November 16th, 2009

This article by Patrick B. Reddy, Esq., a partner with Emery Reddy, PLLC, Attorneys at Law.

Lost in the debate over health care re-form, amidst the question of whether a public option will bankrupt the government, aggressive nationwide “tea parties,” and even the question of how healthcare reform should involve tort reform, is the abyss of the federal and state workers’ compensation systems.
Has the president or any member of congress from either party considered the impact workers’ compensation has had on our nation’s health?
Since widespread workplace tort injury reform was enacted at the turn of the last century, employers have seen their bottom lines decrease, and workers have accepted far less compensation than they would receive if they were allowed to file suit against their employers for negligence.
The result? Assuming a claim is accepted, a worker is provided with free 100 percent health care coverage for the conditions related to their injury. There are no co-pays, no deductibles, and no paying for prescriptions.
This system is not just a statewide phenomenon. There are no less than three separate federal workers’ compensation systems ranging from injuries at sea (the Jones Act, 46 U.S.C. Section 30101 et seq.), to railroad injuries, and to injuries at shores and harbors (the Long Shore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act, 33 U.S.C. Section 901 et seq.).
In all of these systems, the question is not how much should the worker receive in terms of compensation (though this is still heavily litigated in some states), but where and when the worker will receive health care benefits to make the injured worker whole. There is no question of pre-existing conditions preventing health care (most systems require pre-existing conditions to be incorporated into the on-the-job injury treatment). Simliarly, a worker cannot be denied coverage because of age, duration of employment, or the existence of unrelated health issues (such as heart disease, diabetes, or obesity).
The workers’ compensation system should be the poster child for health care reform. Employers, governments and workers do complain about the system, and it is certainly fraught with problems. But the system works. And it works without bankrupting the government or employers.

The system prevents the disease caused by underlying injury from disabling the worker, allowing the worker to return to work more quickly. Only in rare circumstances is the worker unable to return to any form of work. Compare this to the 50 million Americans who are underinsured and who forego treatment or incur massive debt because they become hospitalized.

Also compare workers’ compensation to the Social Security Disability system, and the Medicare and Medicaid systems, which cover the youngest, oldest and poorest persons in our society.
All of these systems require pay-from-paycheck funding (FICA taxes), and pooled funding from various state and federal sources to keep the systems alive.  The systems are beguiled by taxation, borrowing and misappropriation.  Instead, the workers’ compensation systems have separate funds, and separate insurance rates actually tailored to the risk associated with the particular insured industry. Commonly referred to as a “tax,” workers’ compensation premiums collected by the state and federal governments go directly, and only, to paying for injury claims and maintaining the system. If a particular employer has an increased number of claims, their rate goes up. If a particular industry is prone to catastrophic accidents, their rate is higher. Traditionally “safe” industries are rewarded by lower premiums.  Office-based industries such as law offices, accounting firms and banks tend to have lower premiums. Heavy industry such as manufacturing and transportation tend to have higher premiums.
In addition, many states have private or self-insurance systems that allow employers to control and manage their claims. In these states, employers have direct involvement in managing, and an incentive to minimize injury to reduce the cost of claims. The government oversees the claim management, and makes the ultimate decision regarding the treatment of the injured worker.
The fear that health care reform will create a government behemoth ignores the steady, manageable workers’ compensation systems. If it is possible to create over 50 such “health care” systems that tend to work, affordable nationwide health care reform is possible.
If all Americans paid something into a health care system, costs would be contained and recovered. No longer would the question about health care coverage be whether the individual is covered, but how much the individual must pay based upon the individual’s employment and other factors. Employers already pay into the workers’ compensation system. Those “taxes” will necessarily go down as workers find themselves covered with 100 percent health care benefits — regardless of whether they were injured at work or develop a nonspecific debilitating disease such as cancer. The health care system would seek reimbursement from the workers’ compensation system, and the workers’ compensation system would prevent health care costs from escalating when the injury or disease is work-related.
The focus would be realigned to where it should be — making people healthier.  Private health insurance companies will survive. Just as some states allow private employers to use self-insurance, private health care companies would coexist with government systems in a constant competition that will make both systems better and fair.
With all of its flaws, the workers’ compensation system does work. But it needs and is constantly undergoing improvements.
With a viable public option for health care coverage, the work injury system can be improved in conjunction with a system that covers all individuals in need of health care regardless of the cause of the injury or disease.
It makes less sense to continue to manage and improve the multitude of workers’ compensation systems in a vacuum. Without a viable public option, work injuries will continue to be the sole source of health care for many workers. Having some public care available encourages fraud. Currently, underinsured workers have an incentive to seek an on-the-job injury as their sole source of health care benefits.
A comprehensive public system would remove worker incentives to claim work injuries to care for nonwork-related conditions. The costs associated with preventing such fraud would be significantly reduced.  Similarly, the incidences of fraud pertaining to nonwork-related tort injures such as automobile accidents would be reduced.  The question of getting back to good health would be separated from the question of getting paid.

Please visit Emery Reddy, PLLC online or call us at (206) 442-9106.

Emery Reddy represents plaintiffs in L & I, employment and injury matters.  The firm and its attorneys are trusted advocates for Washington workers who experience job related injuries.

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