A Workers’ Comp Plan With Promise
Too often, adding another layer of managers to a company payroll means trouble for workers--another bunch of self-important supervisors that workers must cope with.
It doesn’t have to be that way, though, and it can even help now and then.
A Los Angeles corporation and a local union are experimenting with a plan that adds a thin layer of company-paid management, called “neutral third-party employee advocates,” that just might help the company and its employees save money on their workers’ compensation system and make it more effective.
If the experiment works, maybe millions of other workers across the country can be helped as well.
Corporations, unions and legislators in all 50 states are trying without much success to figure out ways to help workers who are hurt on the job--1.2 million in California alone last year--and at the same time reduce the rising costs employers and workers pay for that help.
Certified Grocers of California, a multibillion-dollar wholesale grocery corporation, has joined with Teamsters Local 630 to try the experiment that union and company officials say seems to be simultaneously helping the company and its employees. The 8-month-old program is too new to be positive yet, however.
The experiment centers on using a small, independent firm--Health Management Center West--that provides trained employee advocates who guide injured workers through the morass of lawyers, doctors, insurance adjusters and others to get the medical and financial aid due them.
The foundation of the experiment is that elusive quality, trust. Yet, the program does sound suspicious: The company hired the employee advocates to be on the side of the injured worker.
So why should workers trust those company-paid guides to expedite their claims and make sure they are not being cheated?
In theory, at least, because of two key factors: The workers are free to go to their own doctors and lawyers if they don’t trust the employee advocates, and also because the union they elected to represent them helped set up the program and monitors it to protect the workers’ interests.
The system can help the company and workers by reducing the huge amounts of time and money it takes to get aid to those who are injured or made ill on the job.
The entirely voluntary experiment, called “Job Care,” will collapse if it isn’t used by almost all of the employees, and, so far, it has been. For that reason, a similar plan might be effective elsewhere, even if workers don’t have a union.
If the union is vigilant--and the local at Certified has a good reputation--it will be difficult for the employee advocates to reduce costs only to help the company even if they tried.
To start the program, the company and union went to the Springfield, Mass.-based Health Management Co. that was already operating the firm’s family assistance program, which deals with such problems as alcohol and drug abuse. Together they developed Job Care through a newly formed subsidiary, Health Management Center West.
Health Management helps select the industrial clinics that workers use when they are first injured and can recommend the doctors and lawyers the workers can use if they want to. The employee advocates are expected to weed out overpriced, inefficient clinics, doctors and lawyers.
If bureaucratic red tape can be cut and unnecessary medical and legal fees reduced, the savings could be tremendous.
Another innovative part of the system provides a temporary light duty, modified work program for those only slightly incapacitated. They earn 90% of their base wage, which is now about $15 an hour.
Others can get on-the-job training at Certified or outside vocational rehabilitation to help them move to other jobs, if necessary.
Don Grose, Certified’s senior vice president who dreamed up the idea, swears he isn’t trying to save money by depriving injured workers of either the medical or financial help they receive though the employer-financed workers’ compensation system.
“Contrary to the opinion of many people, I am convinced the typical worker who is hurt on the job is not a malingerer. A major problem for the workers is that they rarely know the best and quickest way to use the system and get help,” Grose says.
He and Jerry Vercruse, head of the Teamsters’ local, say the Job Care program can provide workers with essential information fast, and that early intervention can be crucial to their short- and long-range physical and financial well-being.
Certified workers are properly cautioned that they may be confused by radio, television and newspaper ads and by “well-meaning friends and associates who advise on the ‘best way’ to deal with all the complications” of on-the-job injuries.
Employers in many states, including California, are trying to “reform” the workers’ compensation system, but that usually means cutting down on benefits to workers.
Two weeks ago, the California Labor Federation waged a furious political fight and managed to defeat legislation demanded by a powerful political coalition that included the California Manufacturers Assn., the Chamber of Commerce and Gov. Pete Wilson. They tried in vain to substantially reduce worker benefits.
The Job Care program at Certified is no substitute for genuine reform in the system that, despite its high costs, doesn’t provide nearly enough financial help to injured workers.
But if it does even half of what the company and union officials expect, Job Care may spread to other companies across the country. That could mean saving literally billions of dollars now spent on lawyers, doctors, insurance companies and others who eat up nearly half of the billions spent each year on workers’ compensation.
