CAAA: They Call It Reform

Thursday, March 31, 2022 | 0

Last Thursday, CAAA’s Legislative Committee met to strategize on rumored workers’ compensation “reform.”

With inflation raging out of control, any reform would include an increase in PD benefits. Injured workers need a raise. Inflation is eating away at their ability to pay their bills as they recover from their injuries.

Legislative Committee member Mark Gearheart made a powerful observation about past workers’ compensation reforms: “Why do disability benefit increases mean that injured workers be forced to give up other rights in exchange?”

When the minimum wage goes up, workers aren’t required to give up Medi-Cal health care coverage. When hotel housekeepers get a pay raise, they aren’t required to clean more rooms. When people who work for the Legislature, the governor, the school district, the fire department or the police department get a pay raise to keep up with inflation, they aren’t told their health care or pension has to be reduced in exchange.

Construction workers who build roads or bridges or train tracks aren’t forced to cut access to health care in exchange for the prevailing wage.

Teachers aren’t forced to give up tenure. Firefighters aren’t forced to give up seniority. Grocery workers aren’t forced to trade away a full-time workweek.

Maybe injured workers should unionize. Maybe then these absurd legislative reforms will simply be a dark memory of a stupid and inhumane past.

This opinion is republished, with permission, from the California Applicants' Attorneys Association website.