Public Employee Press

DC 37 presses Albany for reform of state Workers’ Comp system

By JANE LaTOUR

The biggest lament of the employers who pay into New York State’s Workers’ Compensation system is that it costs too much money. But a big part of the cost is to subsidize widespread cheating by businesses.

According to a report issued in January by the Fiscal Policy Institute, the system is being defrauded by up to $1 billion a year in illegal underpayments by some companies, forcing others to make up the loss in higher premiums.

A worse problem in human terms is underpayments for working people who are killed or injured on the job. But the campaign to reform the system that pays injured workers the third lowest maximum benefit in the United States — $400 per week — has been blocked for fifteen years by employers and their allies in the insurance lobby and the Business Council.

For years, unions have proposed changes to improve the system, but employers are pressing for alternative proposals that amount to a “deform” of the system, according to DC 37 Safety and Health Director Lee Clarke.

Labor coalition
On Feb. 6, Clarke led a multi-union delegation to Albany to press legislators for real reform. “Our message is simple,” she said. “It’s been 15 years since the wage replacement benefit has been increased. We need system-wide changes to improve the system and protect injured workers.”

“Even Frank Barbaro showed up to support our efforts,” said Clarke, who chairs the Workers’ Compensation Committee of the New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health. Barbaro formerly chaired the state Assembly’s labor committee.

One surprising aspect of the day was the ignorance of many legislators on a subject so important to working families statewide. “After the meetings, I was shocked to learn that many of them saw no need to reform the system and knew little of the problems that cripple Workers’ Comp,” said Clarke.

She sat with many of the leading legislators, including Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, in an effort to educate them on the decades-old problem. “We highlighted the fact-finding by the Fiscal Policy Institute and the impact of fraud on the system,” she said. The statewide coalition aims to achieve the following reforms:

• Increase the benefit to at least two-thirds of the state’s average weekly wage
• Index the benefit to the state’s average weekly wage
• Prevent cutbacks. Workers should not have to pay for a benefit increase by cutting back on benefits they currently have, such as through arbitrary time limits on permanent partial disability, which the employers’ lobby is seeking.