Injured Workers

By Sam Gold

Three words: Money, Power & Politics. Why do they even call it Workers’ Compensation? It’s certainly not about workers, it’s about insurance companies and their financial bottom lines, and the last thing in the world it does is adequately compensate workers for their occupational injuries which in many cases are due to the negligent actions and behavior of their employers. But hey, they have a “Get Out Of Jail FREE” card called the “Exclusive Remedy!"

When a worker can no longer perform his normal job duties, the law says he must be compensated for his inability to compete in the future job market. But what the insurers throw at the injured worker simply amounts to “Chump Change,” wholly inadequate and certainly not enough to make a difference to the worker.  

By Mitch Seaman
California Labor Federation

On Thursday, March 1st, an exciting new website launched to allow California workers access to their employer’s workers compensation coverage status. With this website, any employee can now verify whether or not their employer carries valid workers compensation coverage—information that not only keeps workers safe but helps the public and regulators crack down on the underground economy.

By Dick Meister
Author, Journalist

The birth date of Cesar Chavez, the late farm workers' leader, will be celebrated next month, and rightly so.  But it's well past time we also celebrated the life of probably the most important of the other leaders who played a major role in winning union rights for farm workers and otherwise helping them combat serious exploitation.

That's Larry Itliong. He died 35 years ago this month at age 63. Itliong got involved in the farm workers' struggle very early in life, not long after he arrived as a 15-year-old immigrant from the Philippine Islands. He was among some 31,000 Filipino men who came to California in the late 1920s.

By Dick Meister

Dina Bakst of the Work and Family Legal Center reminds us of an important fact that few people seem to realize – that getting pregnant can cause a woman to lose her job, despite the laws banning employment discrimination against women and the disabled.

Bakst asked, in a recent New York Times column, that we imagine a woman who, seven months pregnant, was fired from her job as a cashier because she needed a few extra bathroom breaks.

That actually happened.  So did the firing of a pregnant worker from her retail job after she gave her supervisors a doctor's note asking that she not be required to do any heavy lifting or climbing of ladders during the month and a half before she went on maternity leave.

By Joan Lichterman
UPTE-CWA 9119

UC attorneys and spinmeisters are working overtime to defend the regents, UCLA, and a UCLA chemistry professor in Superior Court against felony charges for willfully violating workplace health and safety standards resulting in the death of a 23-year-old lab assistant. The arraignment is scheduled for Thursday, February 2, and safety advocates fear that a plea bargain will be entered at that time with an inappropriate sentence.

By Joan Lichterman
UPTE-CWA 9119

At the Cal/OSHA Advisory Committee meeting on Thursday, November 3rd, Chief Ellen Widess announced that the Division has been authorized to hire new staff (other sources indicate that 43 is the number to be hired.) Later in the day, she learned that the state Department of General Services (DGS) plans to eliminate more state cars that Cal/OSHA inspectors and consultants use to conduct worksite safety inspections, investigate accidents and enforce health and safety laws. This appears to be the latest move in Gov. Jerry Brown's efforts to cut Cal/OSHA resources in order to "show cost savings" for an agency that costs the state nothing. Political optics rule the day.

In the last three years, Cal/OSHA has lost cell phones, office space, and at least 50 cars, and now the DGS wants to take another 85 -- from an agency that draws exactly ZERO General Fund/ state budget money. Cal/OSHA's expenses are paid by federal OSHA and a workers' comp employer surcharge.

By David Macaray

If you were wondering where the United States ranks, relative to the rest of the world, in the general category of “worker protection,” there is now a precise answer available — one supplied by Professor Kenneth Thomas of the University of Missouri (St. Louis), who based his findings on statistics supplied by OECD members.

The OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) is a group of 34 comparatively “rich” industrialized nations that was founded in 1961 and whose stated purpose, more or less, is to meet semi-regularly to discuss ways of increasing economic progress through world trade. It might help to think of the OECD as an international version of the Chamber of Commerce. Its headquarters are in Paris, France.

By Sam Gold
Injured Workers Television Network

In Part 2 we talked about how justice always seems to be meted out in favor of the insurance companies because they’re the ones who pump the Fraud Assessment Commission bucket full of cold hard cash. When is the last time, if any, you ever heard of an insurance carrier being prosecuted by the state or any DA for that matter, for committing fraud against an injured worker and violating his/her constitutional rights? And after all isn’t there a definite conflict of interests in our District Attorney offices when a monetary incentive is offered for successful prosecutions? You be the judge.

By Sam Gold
Injured Workers Television Network

In Part 1, we talked about how treatment and even the request for simple basic diagnostic procedures are now totally controlled by the insurance carriers. No longer does the opinion of your treating doctor matter if it is contradictory to what the insurance company thinks. And no longer can you be treated by your own personal physician unless he of course agrees in writing to treat you and you pre-designate him on a form submitted in advance to your employer. Why is this?

It’s all about CONTROL. Cost controls are now more important than the well-being and welfare of the poor injured worker. The insurance money talks and our legislators seem to want their piece of the action in the form of PAC and election contributions.

By Sam Gold

The last person who gets served by this supposed social insurance program and state mandated insurance coverage is the occupationally injured or diseased worker, and that is sadly a reality, an anthem of how far that we have NOT progressed in the 21st century.

A hundred years ago this system was created in states all around the nation and the occupationally injured are still waiting for employers and their insurers to keep their word and deliver the benefits that were promised. Instead of a quick diagnosis and treatment, some injured workers have had to wait months and in one case, a year for a simple MRI that revealed the immediate need for surgery.