For Business Owners, How Workers’ Comp Gets Fixed Is Not as Important as When

A reader put the workers’ comp issue in perspective, I suspect, for most California employers. He wrote me:

“I don’t give a rat’s ear how they get it reformed as long as we see a cut in our premiums. And a big one at that.”

That’s a slightly edited version of his e-mail.

Spare him all the workers’ comp legislative jargon -- “causation,” “apportionment,” “permanent partial” -- that even has been rolling off the lips of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Just stanch his bleeding.

You might call Paul Milward a widget-maker -- a third-generation widget-maker. He makes inked ribbons -- like for cash registers -- and also distributes paper rolls, cartridges and related items “to try to stay alive.”

He’s what is known as a small businessman, employing 40 people at his Bushnell Ribbon manufacturing and distribution plant in Santa Fe Springs. His grandfather bought the company from E.E. Bushnell in 1939, and his dad purchased it in 1948. It’s family-run.

“I am getting strangled from off-shore competition,” wrote Milward, 50, of La Mirada. “Most imaging products -- ribbons, ink jets -- come from China, and they have favored-trade status. I have to compete against labor at $2 per day on top of workers’ comp. That is the reason workers’ comp is so important.”

I replied that he should write his local legislators. He answered: “I e-mail and call, and it doesn’t do any good.”

Intrigued, I phoned Milward.

His workers’ comp premiums have soared 80% in the last year, he said. (Statewide, rates have tripled for some companies in recent years. California’s $22-billion system has by far the highest premiums in the nation with only average benefits for injured workers.)

“It makes it difficult to compete with out-of-state manufacturers,” Milward continued. “It freezes up capital we’d like to spend on improving our company -- like with a new computer system. We have to tell employees, ‘Sorry, you can’t get a bonus because our workers’ comp doubled.’ ”

In the Capitol, there isn’t a legislator who hasn’t heard similar gripes and pleas many times over.

“The pressure that the governor is trying to bring on this issue is minuscule compared to what we get in our districts,” says Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sun Valley), the Senate Democrats’ comp expert. “We can’t go to a grocery store without being approached about workers’ comp. Certainly we can’t go to a Chamber of Commerce meeting.

“Labor also is hammering. They’d rather have the [premium] money put back on the [bargaining] table.”

But negotiations have alternately spurted and sputtered, for at least two reasons.

First, there’s an extra caution, a consensus that after years of passing futile so-called reforms, this time legislators better get it right.

“This is an historic opportunity that we cannot afford to lose,” says Sen. Chuck Poochigian (R-Fresno), the GOP guru on comp.

“These issues come along once or twice a decade.”

Some remember personally -- and all wince when thinking about it -- one particular big issue of the last decade: electricity deregulation. Like workers’ comp, it was complex. Legislators got that one wrong, and it was a disaster.

Second, the special interests -- comp attorneys, labor unions, insurers, medical providers, business groups -- all have been banging on the politicians, including the governor.

One special interest is Costco, which is helping the governor collect signatures to qualify his workers’ comp initiative for the November ballot, just in case legislators fail to pass a bill by Friday. At a Schwarzenegger signature-solicitation Tuesday, Costco commandeered Sacramento city police to keep a labor official from handing out anti-initiative press releases. One sergeant even attempted to bar me from talking to the labor official at the rally site -- and was reminded about the Constitution.

Amid the circus, Schwarzenegger and legislators are on the verge of enacting significant reform, an antidote to what the governor calls California’s economic poison.

To win the strong support of Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco), Schwarzenegger has winked that he won’t actively support a November ballot referendum to overturn a 2003 Burton bill requiring most employers to carry health insurance for their workers. Business groups are bankrolling the referendum.

At Republicans’ insistence, Schwarzenegger dropped his earlier consideration of a demand by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) that comp premiums be regulated. Democrats wanted to make sure that insurers didn’t just pocket the reform savings. But the GOP objects to anything that smacks of price controls.

“We’re not going to hold up workers’ comp reform on any single issue,” Nunez said after the governor backed him down. “We don’t want to be holding the bag when the bottle falls out.”

But as of late Wednesday, there still wasn’t a firm deal. Agreeing on concepts is different than signing off on language. Words get litigated.

“They can argue forever,” says Milward. “They’ve got to get something done now. Otherwise, they’re going to see more and more manufacturers moving.”

He’s right: It’s time for the lawmakers to make their own move.

George Skelton writes Monday and Thursday. Reach him at george.skelton@latimes.com.