Newsline: June 2004
3 Bills On Tap to Reform State Workers’ Comp Law
 The debate over New York State’s Workers’ Compensation policy has intensified as three different reform bills are jockeying for support from the legislature and governor.
It has been 12 years since the last increase in Workers’ Compensation benefits. People injured on the job in 2004 receive the same maximum benefit of $400 a week as workers received in 1992. What’s worse, only three percent of claims qualify for maximum compensation -- that means 97 percent of injured workers receive an average benefit of only $150 per week.
To add insult to injury, the cost of living is 30 percent higher in 2004 than it was 12 years ago, when the $400 a week benefit was 66 percent of New York’s average weekly wage. Today, $400 is less than half (44 percent) of the average weekly wage.
Recently, the New York State AFL-CIO and New York Law School’s Labor and Employment Law Program sponsored a forum where five experts on Workers’ Compensation policy agreed on the following reforms:
- Increase the maximum benefit.
- Link New York State benefits to an index of average wages. (New York is one of only five states that do not automatically adjust the benefit to reflect changing average wages.)
- Require the Workers’ Compensation Board to publish statistical information about its system. (Unlike New York State, other states make information available about the operations of their systems.)
“New York State currently ranks dead last in the level of replacement wages it provides to injured workers,” said William Henning, vice president of Local 1180 of the Communications Workers of America, in a recent letter to the editor of Newsday. Henning, also chairman of the board of the New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH), added that “Some estimates reveal that for every dollar taken in [insurance] premiums, injured workers are receiving about 50 cents. Where is the rest going?”
To build support for reforms, the New York State AFL-CIO has launched a campaign calling on union members to urge state legislators to vote for bill S.6135/A.9736, which would increase the maximum benefit to two thirds (as it was set in 1992) of the state’s average weekly wage. The bill would also link benefits to an index of average wages.
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