As Maine’s 125th Legislature enters its final days before adjournment, the LePage administration has yet another proposal that would hurt workers, this time workers injured on the job. Consider the following scenario:
After spending five years of training, a 25-year-old electrical journeyman has a herniated disc in his back for which he undergoes surgery. Scar tissue forms as a result of the surgery, requiring a second surgery. Eventually, because the disc has deteriorated so badly because of the injury, it is removed entirely and his lower back is fused. As a result of the fusion, as is often the case, the disc above goes and requires a fourth operation.
Because of the four operations and resulting symptoms and limitations, the journeyman is permanently disabled from performing his occupation. Typically, he would be defined as having a 20 percent permanent impairment and so under the LePage proposal, his benefits will automatically be terminated after ten years at age 35, even if he is unable to find employment or even if he is only earning 1 percent of what he was making ten years earlier.
The LePage administration appointee Paul Sighinolfi, executive director of the Maine Workers’ Compensation Board, has presented numerous proposals during this session to the Labor, Commerce Research and Economic Development committee. The last, however, despite claiming “compromise” and “moderation” veered far in favor of insurance companies. In fact, no Maine business saw this as important enough to come to the public hearing and testify in favor of Sighinolfi’s proposals. All unions, workers, injured workers and worker advocates testified in opposition.
On April 4, the insurance industry proposal, LR 2787, was voted out of the committee by a partisan 7-6 vote. If approved by the full Legislature, it will harm potentially thousands of injured Mainers.
Currently, if a worker suffers more than approximately 12 percent whole body impairment, they typically receive benefits for the duration of the disability. Under the insurance industry proposal, anyone who suffers between 12 percent and 25 percent impairment will be out of luck after ten years, no matter the situation, regardless if they are impaired for 15 years, 20 years or the rest of their life.
For the most badly injured workers, above 25 percent impairment, this proposal allegedly offers a safety net. Here’s how you get it: first, despite being incredibly impaired, you need to work for two years prior to the 10 year deadline; second, some bureaucrat must judge your work “commensurate” with your earning capacity; and third, your earnings during those two years of work in years eight through ten must be “50 percent or less of the pre-injury average weekly wage.”
How about that! It may take a minute to wrap one’s head around this pig in a poke. For example, if you made $800 a week ($20 an hour) in 2013, then 10 years from now in 2023 dollars, you will be cut off from workers’ compensation benefits if you make more than $399.99 in a week in 2023 dollars. Inflation will do the dirty work. And don’t forget that bureaucrat who will be prodding around to make sure you stay “commensurate” with your “earning capacity.”
When you do the math and consider inflation, it’s hard to imagine anyone qualifying for this and certainly not workers who make less than $20 an hour at the time of injury.
Adding to the outrage of this misguided proposal is that the Maine Workers’ Compensation system is currently doing great for insurers and employers (even if not always for workers). According to the Maine WCB annual report released in 2012, “compensation rates have dropped 56 percent since 1993; MEMIC has recently declared a $12 million dividend to Maine businesses; and the board has reduced the assessment to employers by approximately $3 million over the past two years, all of which contribute to one of the more stable workers’ compensation systems in the country.”
During testimony, Sighinolfi spoke at length and eloquently about compromise, saying about himself that he can say with a “straight face and pure of heart” that this is a compromise “somewhere in the middle” and that he’s helping workers.
However, despite all the beautiful words, the rhetorical flourishes and evoking the need for Maine to be “more competitive,” at the end of the day if this proposal is passed, real people who have suffered terrible workplace injuries will be thrown under the bus while insurance companies reap the benefits.
And there will be no whitewashing that truth.
Please, contact your senators and representatives and ask them to oppose this terrible workers’ compensation bill.
Jack McKay is director of the Brewer-based Food AND Medicine, which supports workers and farmers in Eastern Maine.
I think everyone knows or knows of people who are manipulating the system. IMO they are the ones who won’t be affected by the limits on coverage. It will be those who haven’t grown up and networked with the cheats who will be cut.
November 6th……..vote anything but republican. We CAN take back our State.
35 years of democratic control created the current business environment that is a cesspool here in Maine. Maybe we can be ranked 57th if we bring back all the unions and their Democrat puppets.
So, correlation causation fail. The government has much less power to create / maintain jobs than you think. The reason Maine has become what it is at the moment is due to outsourcing. We were a manufacturing state. It is cheeper to make goods in first mexico in the late 70s and now in China. The state level government had very little control over those trade negotiations.
We need to re-assess our state assets and consider “What can the state of Maine be great at again.” However, the people in power do not seem to be thinking that way. They are throwing out blanket policies that are bad for lower wage, lower income people and touting them as general solutions to make Maine more “business friendly.” They are not Maine peoples ideas they come directly from the heritage foundation and have no historical precedent of creating jobs.
Whoever is voted into office this fall needs to learn to think what is best for ALL Mainers and what is best for Maine. Not do whatever their think tank buddies tell them.
Agreed why jobs left but are you blind that the last 35 years resulted in an environment that scares business away. My town just passed an anti-corporate resoultion to make certain than corps can’t “speak”. The enviros will try to stop you from building a dog house. The moonbats will tell you this biz is no good because its headquartered out of state. Main Street wants to eliminate competition from box stores or chains. So far the only thing that Maine has proven itself good at, its sweet spot, is to create an entitlement union driven environment landing the state in last place for earnings. This has nothing to do with LePage and think tanks. It has everything to do with hacks and unions running this state into poverty for many decades.
Democrats like John Martin, lawyers like Pat McTeague brought WC to its knees and almost destroyedf it. almost. We do not need a repeat of those Democratic blunders. We took our state back already.
“All unions, workers, injured workers and worker advocates testified in opposition.”
This sentence is an indicator of a very poorly-considered op-ed, as it is absolutely inaccurate. How do I know? Well, I am a “worker” and I certainly did not testify against this bill, and I am confident that not all injured workers testified either.
This is the problem with the entitlement state. Safety-net programs like Workers Comp ultimately become hammocks, and may Heaven help responsible program managers and politicians who seek to return such assistance to their original purpose.
The example given is an extreme one, but if I was in such a situation, I believe I would adapt by learning another trade within ten years. I hear there is money to be made by using one’s computer, for example.