Confessions of a Mad Comp-oholic

The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.

--from the Book of Jeremiah

Franz Kafka had a day job. By nights the Austrian-Czech novelist wrote the weird black-is-white, white-is-black fiction that would make him the darling of undergrads everywhere. But by day he toiled in the Workers Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. Yes, Kafka was a workers’ comp lawyer.

This historical footnote comes from a fat file on my desk, a heap of commission reports, case studies, correspondence and other assorted material that represents an inexplicable fascination with one of the most wonkish, and--yes, Kafkaesque--of public issues: workers’ comp.

For the last two years I have tracked the state’s workers’ comp debate. I have become, I confess, an utter bore on the subject, peppering doctor and lawyer friends at every chance for insider analysis, jawing with entrepreneurs over the nuances of soft-tissue injuries, and writing more than anyone would want to read about workers’ comp. I came to see the whole issue as a tangle of self-fulfilling myths--planted, nurtured and finally harvested by business leaders who for 15 years clamored for workers’ comp reform, and finally, in a recession, found a way to pull it off.

But there I go again.

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I caught the workers’ comp bug interviewing an Oklahoman in Orange County. He had been stationed there to coerce California businesses to defect to the Sooner state. I thought this was laughable, but he assured me he was making headway. And he gave credit to California business leaders and Gov. Wilson, who were just beginning a campaign to blame the state’s unemployment on a lousy busy climate and, in particular, workers’ comp. In effect, they were doing the Oklahoman’s work. Rather than telling California entrepreneurs to buck up, that the hard times would pass, they were saying the state was broken and nobody could blame businesses for fleeing.

Next came Norm, who runs a container company. When I wrote a column suggesting that workers’ comp reform was not the magic bullet to turn around a recession, Norm called with a suggestion of his own. It cannot be printed, but an odd sort of relationship developed. I’d write that the business flight scenario was bogus, and Norm would call to ask if I was on drugs. We’d debate for about an hour, then end on friendly terms. I’ll miss my chats with Norm, just as I’ll miss my Fresno chiropractor, my Sacramento strategist and all the rest of the old workers’ comp gang.

See, I figure this is my last column on the issue. Blessedly, a reform package was approved last week. The matter is closed. The spell is broken. And I can go back to writing about Fresno days. Pity, though, there was so much more in the file.

For example, here’s a document that demolishes one of the biggest myths--the notion that California premiums were among the nation’s highest, but payments to workers were among the lowest. This provided a great lever, lending the issue populist appeal. Unfortunately, it is not true. Lump in all forms of recompense--not just the weekly paycheck, but money paid to physical therapists and vocational rehabilitation clinics and so forth--and California ranks sixth nationally in what it provides injured workers.

And here’s a study by the Insurance Commission that found more than half of all major claims stem from accidents that could be prevented with common-sense workplace precautions. “They’d rather spend $50,000 on a workers’ comp claim than put in a $1,000 conveyor belt,” one of the investigators told me. I wonder why that report never got much attention. And here’s . . . ah, but there I go again.

*

Now is not the time to ponder the one reform bill as yet unsigned by the governor--a measure to abolish the so-called minimum rate and deprive insurers of guaranteed profit. Nor is it the time to relate discussions with business owners who now are bitterly disappointed with the reform package--noting that it roughly is the same as one Wilson refused to sign last year, that the 7% premium reduction it provides would have occurred even without legislation, that in the end it all boiled down to posture politics.

“This became an issue about Pete Wilson, about making sure something got passed so that he wouldn’t be deemed un-reelectable,” said one of them, a person who, incidentally, happened to serve on Wilson’s workers’ comp advisory committee.

But there I go again. It is no time for such nit-picking. It is time to celebrate the myth of the magic bullet. Eureka! We have reformed it! Let the boom begin. Yah.