Assembly Approves Higher Workers’ Comp Benefits

Despite strong opposition from business, the state Assembly on Wednesday passed legislation to significantly boost workers’ compensation benefits in California, which ranks next to last nationally in the assistance it offers injured employees.

The measure by Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco) easily cleared the lower house on a 47-26, party-line vote, incurring the wrath of Republicans who said it would burden small businesses, but winning support from moderate Democrats who have opposed similar bills before.

“You can’t continue to have these abysmal benefits that just screw injured workers. You have to come into the 21st century,” said Assemblyman Paul Koretz (D-West Hollywood).

“You can’t tell me that if your fourth finger got chopped off, you would be satisfied with a $2,500 check,” said Koretz, noting that in Michigan, a similarly injured worker would receive $115,000.

However, SB71, which must obtain final passage in the state Senate, faces an uncertain future. For two years, Gov. Gray Davis has vetoed attempts to increase workers’ compensation benefits, and he has yet to take a formal stance on Burton’s bill. Nonetheless, the bill’s supporters maintain that Davis ultimately will back this year’s effort.

Department of Industrial Relations Director Stephen Smith said Davis wants to increase workers’ compensation benefits this year. But he will only support broader legislation that substantially changes the entire system, such as lowering pharmaceutical costs and increasing the role of health care organizations, Smith said.

“Bottom line, the governor wants to increase workers’ comp benefits for all injured workers,” Smith said. “He wants a relatively modest but still substantial increase.”

Democrats and Republicans in both houses speculate that the workers’ compensation bill ultimately will obtain Davis’ signature as part of a deal between the Democratic governor and Burton, a savvy veteran known for negotiating leverage to get the things he wants.

With Davis pleading for the Legislature to approve a $2.9-billion government bailout of Southern California Edison, they said, Burton may hold the trump card needed to pass workers’ compensation this time.

Typically brusque, Burton called the speculation “stupid” and said “the governor’s office has not related [the two issues] and I am not relating them.”

The bailout, he recently quipped, is struggling “on its own merits” without his intervention.

Burton’s workers’ compensation bill is considered weak by many organized labor backers, but would result in sizable raises in numerous benefits over a five-year period.

It would gradually raise the maximum total disability benefit to $651 a week, or 1.5 times the state average weekly wage, by 2005, for example, and the partial disability minimum from $70 to $130.

The Democratic supporters of Burton’s bill said that although employers’ insurance premiums declined after lawmakers approved a massive restructuring of the workers’ compensation system in 1993, a promise to bolster workers’ benefits in return never materialized.

“It’s absolutely shameful what we are doing,” said Assemblyman Tom Calderon (D-Montebello), a moderate who carried the bill for Burton in the lower house, and whose backing Burton credited for its easy passage.

The Republican foes largely conceded that benefits are not what they should be, but noted that since the 1993 restructuring, insurance premiums have steadily risen. They argued that the entire system once again needs reform.

“You can’t pile cost upon cost upon cost on businesses and expect them to survive,” said Assemblyman Tim Leslie (R-Tahoe City), noting the Democrat-dominated Legislature has boosted overtime and numerous employee benefits in recent years.