Jerry Brown's Workers' Compensation Record

Monday, November 15, 2010 | 0

By Julius Young
Boxer & Gerson

The Meg Whitman campaign ended Nov. 2, a spectacular failure.

So Jerry Brown will soon be forming a gubernatorial team. At the victory celebration election night at Oakland's Fox Theater, a handful of prominent players in California workers' comp stopped by to savor the moment.

Workers' comp isn't likely to be near the top of Brown's agenda, though rate issues could cause it to rise in importance.

But within several months we'll see cabinet level appointments being made and we'll know who will be heading agencies such as the Department of Industrial Relations.

For a moment, let's look back at Brown's governorship of 30 years ago.
What did he do in workers' comp?

The following list, read by Salinas attorney Todd McFarren at a California Applicants' Attorney Association convention earlier this year, recites many of the pro-worker aspects of the Brown years:

JERRY BROWN'S RECORD ON WORKERS' COMPENSATION AS GOVERNOR 1975-1983

1975:
Prevents outgoing Reagan administration's last-minute packing of WCAB with hostile commissioners; appoints most solid pro-worker majority on the Appeals Board in history

Signs legislation that:
-provides for free choice of physician
-permits C&R of medical liens
-requires employers to notify injured workers of rights to benefits
-requires coverage of household domestics

1976:
Signs legislation that:
-authorizes commutation of PPD
-increases min PPD from $20 to $30, and max TD to $154
-rescues UEF with appropriation, increases sanctions

1977:
Signs legislation that:
-permits free choice of physician from first day
-requires notice of entitlement to WC benefits
-increases minimum TD to $49

1978:
Signs legislation that:
-eliminates 240-week maximum for TTD

1979:
Signs legislation that:
-creates the DIR
-provides attorney's fees for dependent's depositions
-enacts the Confidentiality of Medical Information Act

1980:
Signs legislation that:
-increases maximum TD to $175
-provides attorney's fees from a lien claimant's recovery
-eliminates offsetting TD against SDI
-DWC sponsored legislation that, among other things, would have
established wage-loss

1981:
Vetoes legislation that would have:
-required appointment of specified labor and employer
representatives to the WCAB and UIAB
-Signs legislation that:
-provides for the appointment of pro-tem WCAB referees

1982:
Signs legislation (AB 684) that:
-provides first major benefit increase bill in CAAA's history,
doubling PPD from $70 to $140 and TD to $224, increasing
S&W penalties and creating power press exception to exclusive
remedy doctrine
-creates and funds 15 new judge teams
-preserves "dual capacity" doctrine
-permits commutation of PPD
-creates first cancer presumption
-memorializes the passing of Eugene Marias, a pioneering
applicants attorney

Other notable achievements during Brown's governorship include the following:
-Signs the Agricultural Labor Relations Act in 1975
-Signed legislation allowing collective bargaining for teachers
and public employees
-Created the nation's first Wellness Commission
-Created the California Worksite Education and Training Act
in 1982
-Signed a 1980 law (SB 1874) that requires employers to
provide information to workers on toxic substances
produced or handled in their workplace
-Signed law in 1976 (SB 1051) strengthening California's equal
pay law

The list is quite impressive.

But Brown's earlier governorship was not without controversy, however.

In 1980, Brown's administration supported SB 375, which would have limited attorney involvement in workers' comp cases and instituted a dispute resolution administrative bureaucracy. In an often quoted story, then-Brown adviser (and current Court of Appeals Justice) Anthony Kline) is said to have uttered that applicant workers' comp lobbyists were "of no more importance than a flea on a gnat's ass".

With help from the Democratic legislative leadership at the time, SB 375 did not prevail. But the struggles over SB 375 and budgetary issues surrounding the WCAB led to bad feelings in the comp community and labor community for some time.

In his last year in office, 1982, labor, insurers, and applicant attorneys and CTLA (the trial lawyers lobby group at the time), pushed through a legislative deal which Brown signed. That deal took much of the edge off earlier feelings surrounding SB 375.

In the decades that followed, Brown had little reason to follow workers' comp.

But with his resurgent career, we'll eventually see Brown filling out his record on comp.

Stay tuned.

Julius Young is an attorney for the Boxer & Gerson applicants' law firm in Oakland. This column was reprinted with his permission from his blog, http://www.workerscompzone.com