Grinberg: Automation's Effect on Comp

Monday, November 15, 2021 | 0

I just can’t help but share another cool new piece of technology that is so nifty, it’s likely the sign of yet another shrinking of the workers’ comp world.  After all, the more automation and the fewer jobs around that result in injury, the fewer files for us all to administer and litigate.

Gregory Grinberg

When California is mentioned to non-Californians, they typically think of things like Hollywood, marijuana, “high” tech and high-tech, horrible — just absolutely horrible — roads. 

A huge sector of California’s job market is in agriculture and always has been. That remains the case now, and there is no shortage of injuries that can occur in that line of work. From horrific farm equipment mangling of limbs to cumulative traumas wearing out joints and bones to chemical exposures from pesticides and herbicides, the agriculture business is a cruel mistress, no mistake.

So, anything that can replace back-breaking human labor with automation is a win-win, right? Employers have fewer injuries to cover and workers have fewer injuries to suffer through. 

Hence, I think it’s pretty cool that Carbon Robotics has a self-driving robot that kills weeds with lasers. 

The machines are already available for sale and have been deployed to several farms, but the real test will be year-after-year of productivity. What could this mean?

More food produced at lower costs, less soil depletion from weed growth and, most importantly, fewer toxic herbicides, which mean fewer chemical exposures and less manual labor for farmworkers. In other words, fewer workers’ compensation claims.

In other words, everyone wins.

Gregory Grinberg is managing partner of Gale, Sutow & Associates’ S.F. Bay South office and a certified specialist in workers’ compensation law. This post is reprinted with permission from Grinberg’s WCDefenseCA blog.