Appellate Ruling to Change How Workers Qualify for Vocational Assistance

The Oregon Court of Appeals has invalidated a rule that failed to take injured workers’ supplemental earnings into account when determining their eligibility for vocational assistance. Oregon’s injured workers qualify for vocational assistance if their post-injury earnings are less than 80% of their pre-injury earnings. Until now, employers were directed to consider only a worker’s wages at the job at which he or she was injured when calculating earnings. This was an issue for Jessie Chu, who tended bar on the weekends when she wasn’t working her full-time job at ...