Bills Would Provide COLAs, Ease Mental Health Compensability Proof

Thursday, March 7, 2019 | 0

Labor leaders and firefighters voiced their support this week for bills that would make it easier for mental stress to be compensable and would restore cost-of-living adjustments to benefits, something that's been missing for a quarter-century.

Sen. Shenna Bellows

LD 601, sponsored by Sen. Shenna Bellows, D-Manchester, would require the inflation adjustments beginning on the third anniversary of the injury and would increase benefits annually each year after that, according to a local news report. The adjustments would be the same as the percentage increase in the average weekly wage.

The Maine AFL-CIO and its members spoke in favor of the bill at legislative committee hearing. The bill "would be a small step toward rectifying some of the inequity that has been caused by the erosion of our workers' comp laws over the last 25 years,” said a member of the Machinists Union.

LD 600, also sponsored by Bellows, would make the standard of proof for compensable mental injuries the same as that for physical injuries. The bill also would require that a work-related injury that aggravates a mental condition may result in compensable disability, similar to what workers who've aggravated a physical condition may be entitled to receive.

Retired firefighter Ronnie Green, district vice president with the Professional Fire Fighters of Maine, told the committee that during his career he had "witnessed things that people should never have to see."

"I have also witnessed firsthand the toll that these mental injuries take on firefighters and other first responders," he said in his testimony. "Some that were previously happy-go-lucky people became isolated, withdrawn, and in some cases unable to function; some have committed suicide. It is time to recognize that mental injuries are just as real and as debilitating as physical injuries, and there is absolutely no reason why someone who has suffered a mental injury at work should have to prove more than someone who has suffered a physical injury at work."