Don't Forget the Injured Worker on Labor Day in California

You are absolutely correct. But how do WE get the "busy" working individuals to take even one minute to realize that this fundamental rights to recovery from an injury at work is flawed and need to be repaired? Working people are too busy and too tired to take attention to this issue. To decipline them to take time and take a close look at their support systems and educate them before it is too late; before it is too late to participate to make these needed repair?

Many workers are UNAWARE of these issues until they actually experience these dreadful flaws. Many employers as well are unaware that they are getting the product (insurance coverages) they paid for for their employees. They are simply to concern only in one thing profit and expenses and maintaining the requirements mandated by law to run a business such requirements as obtaining a workers comp insurance for their employees. Yes the employers have a different take on the insurances they purchased for their employees. They simply concern with the minimum cost, only to meet the requirements mandated by government.

Employers are NOT fully aware of these flaws. Many who trully are concerned and care for their employee's well-being ARE surprise by what they are learning after they lose an A+ worker to a work injury. They have innocently believed that the insurances would cover the expenses and losses of their employee so that they are taken cared of when something tragically happens to them at work.

I know someone personally that have worked for an employer who has been in business for 99 years and I was told has not experienced losses or injury arising from work accident. For 99 years they have been paying for workers comp insurance for their approximately 60 to 100 employees. Not once have they been rewarded by the workers comp insurances of a discounted or reduced premium rates for good performance (no accident claims). Instead when the legislature deregulated the workers comp industry, their premium rates significantly increases year after year, resulting in laying off workers. This went on until one day my friend who worked for them as a manager was hurt at work which left my friend permanently disabled. As a manager, his wages before the injury exceeded that SB899 maximum weekly pay for TD or PD under the workers comp law, leaving my friend financially under insured for his losses, which greatly affected his ability to pay his living expenses suchas loans, credit cards due to the unexpected, unforeseen delay tactics of the insurance company to duck their obligations and responsibilities to pay entitlements. It was apparent that they were trying every possible tricks to delay paying benefits including medical care.

YES indeed MANY employees AND EMPLOYERS are NOT aware of these issues. They simply pay attention to other issues such as premium payments, and how to increase their profit margin and reduced expenses.......forgetting the ramifications of their actions on the legitimately injured workers. They simply have focus more on hanging on to money and protecting themselves from fraudulent claims. This is fine and appropriate; but in the scheme of things, they have forgotten and NOT paid enough attention to those injured workers who are legitimately entitled to coverages promised by the workers compensation system. Employers and legislatures have forgotten that they must balance their concerns co-equally with the injured also. For without the protection of people at work; regardless if you are a manager or a subordinate, or a janitor, or a doctor, or a police, WE ARE ALL WORKERS.......who should be adequately covered under the system of workers comp that will insure us when we fall victim to work injury.

This affect ALL of US including the workers who work in the WORKERS COMP SYSTEM. If one part of the WORKERS COMP SYSTEM, in this case the part for the WORKER, is NOT working or fairly being treated with appropriate attention.............then THE WORKERS COMP SYSTEM ....IS....NOT....WORKING....PROPERLY. It should be fixed before anymore WORKERS get injured and fall between the crack.

Governor should try to understand that when WORKERS are not properly protected by the insurance it is designed to protect.....the cost of burden is shifted to public services that should REALLY only be used for those who have reached rock bottom.

Workers Comp Insurance have enjoyed record profits and they should be held accountable for the "COST shifting schemes" that enable them reap a RECORD PROFIT.

Employees and Employers beware! The system that is designed to insure your well-being and your dignity in times of tragedy arrising from a work related injury is SERIOUSLY flawed. Better NOT ignor it any longer or you may fall into this false sense of security. Do something about it NOW.

One other problem with getting working system to work IS, injury incidencess is significantly lower in NUMBERS compare to those were fortunately lucky NOT to fall victims to work injuries.

By the mere fact that these "NUMBERS" are lower, so as the POLITICAL VOICE for the INJURED WORKERS.

So as a ples for help, WORKERS should suport a fair and equitable and legitimate REFORM to the SYSTEM.

By not doing so, is like playing a Russian Rolet with your "safety net". It affect all of US if not directly by redistribution and allocation of our tax dollars that could be used for other needed services. Force the insurance to be more responsive to their obligation.

"Rise up and help put an end to it". By all means. And in a minute I'll tell you how. Another poster wrote that we need reforms. NO!! Workingclass people are fed up with plodding reforms that do nothing in the long-run and very little in the short-run either. We need a Revolution! And by that I mean, let's say, a world-wide General Strike for a few weeks? To show the ruling class that without the workers, they are useless!

Fed up too with roll-backs, speed-ups, barbaric working conditions and a LABOR ARISTOCRACY which is in bed with the twin parties of big business, not the workers. SAFETY LAST is capitalism's motto. PROFITS BEFORE PEOPLE.

Did you know it took the American worker ONE HUNDRED YEARS of blood, sweat, tears, strikes, and massacres just to acquire the 8-hour day?? (Read Samuel Yellen's American Labor Struggles 1877-1934)

How did that happen? The workers and their families organized, went on strike, they marched, they wrote articles in the papers, THEY TOOK THEIR DEMANDS TO THE STREETS, and they didn't back off until they got the 40-hour week. The government and their capitalist cronies fought and sometimes killed the people at every step they tried to make forward. This is the American History we were not taught.

My point is if YOU ARE AS ANGRY ABOUT THIS AS YOU THINK YOU ARE, then join a group like mine, Radical Women, or the Freedom Socialist Party. These socialist feminist organizations have been battling capitalism and the Bosses for decades. You, alone, can do little. Amplify your voice by joining with others who want peace, justice, and a society where no one is hungry or over-worked or stressed out.

Screaming for action and wearing a button are not enough. If you truly want to change things, help us to root out capitalism and replace it with the sane alternative, socialism. Interested? Go to www.socialism.com and discover a world you never knew existed.

Perhaps the simple answer is for workers to opt out of the mandated workers insurance system. In reviewing the the workers compensation system you will find at its roots farm workers and farmers in the early 20th century looking for an answer to the then current system of employee suing the employer after an injury.

Fact is that it was the farmers united in California the demanded a system that would alleviate the burden of non-stop lawsuits. Imagine Californias number one industry being crippled by individual lawsuits seeking medical cost and lost wages for injuries suffered by workers. Something needed to be done and the California legislature jumped in and created the Workers Compensation Fund.

Then in the early 70's the federal government and later the state government created the OSH act. Modeled after the late 60's mining industry agreements (Mining Safety and Health Act, MSHA) employers were charged with providing a safe and protected environment for their workers. These acts were also a result of a littany of lawsuits seeking compensation for injuries incurred by workers from their employers. Then as in the California case the government came to the aid of business and created a mandate to protect their workers.

What came next was the ADA (Americans with Disablities Act) and this too, was a government bailout of Americas business world when individual lawsuits became too burdensome for employers.

None of these federal or state programs were created for the individual. The fact is though the individual and their lawsuits provoked the business world to seek relief from the litigation. In each of these cases a fundamental flaw was inserted that would guarantee the eventual collapse of these programs.

That flaw is the intended use of private insurance companies to guarantee the cost of the programs. An absolute deathnail put in by the greedy money changers of the business world.

As Sam eloquently stated no insurance company intends to ever let a penny go out of their coffers. So if you want to reform a system that has become so corrupt that even organized crime is envious you would do well to remember the history that got you here today.

As individuals we can do just as those farm workers, miners, and disabled workers did when they were faced with a system rigged against them, they filed! In California alone their are enough injured workers to start the trend and if all workers become aware of the significance of supporting an alternative to the insurance companies get rich quick schemes business' will scream and politicians will get off of their velvet covered tush's and a new answer will be in the making.

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