Today's post comes from guest author Rod Rehm, from Rehm, Bennett & Moore.This is the first installment of a series that will educate workers' and their families about injury, disease and death resulting from work. The most basic question is: What is workers'’ compensation? Workers’ compensation is a legal system established in all 50 states, [...]
The Massachusetts Workers’ Compensation Advisory Council has released its Fiscal Year 2014 Annual Report (PDF link). This report contains some eyebrow-raising statistics. Between 2008 and 2014, Massachusetts was able to help over 50,000 workers' receive coverage due to Stop Work Orders (SWOs). In 2014 alone the Agency was able to obtain insurance for over 5,000 workers' [...]
Many decades ago, OSHA created workplace safety standards to help employees avoid injuries from dangerous working conditions. Despite these standards, each year more than 3 million workers' are seriously injured or killed while on the job. Because Workers’ Compensation fails to cover all the costs of injury, some low-wage workers' (who have a disproportionate rate [...]
The News & Observer recently published an article exposing the under-reporting of workplace deaths by the North Carolina State Department of Labor. The Department reported only 23 deaths for 2013 and for 2014, the Department reported 44 deaths. However, even 44 deaths is significantly less than the 243 workplace deaths reported by the Department in [...]
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics National Compensation Survey 1991 - 2014 (Credit: Sisi Wei/ProPublica) Today's post comes from guest author Rod Rehm, from Rehm, Bennett & Moore.Business and insurance interests are bombarding state legislatures every day of the week to take workers'’ rights away by complaining how most states’ workers'’ compensation systems are too expensive. [...]
Governor Pat McCroryAccording to N.C. Governor Pat McCrory, workers'’ compensation claims cause the state to spend about $150 million per year. He claims that research by CorVel, the state’s administrator for state employee claims, shows that roughly 40% of the workers'’ compensation claims are related to abuse or fraud. When attorneys, professors, and state employee [...]
Today's post comes from guest author Jon Gelman, from Jon L Gelman LLC.Over 140 governments meeting at a United Nations forum in Geneva have agreed to a global, legally-binding treaty to address mercury, a notorious heavy metal with significant health and environmental effects. The Minamata Convention on Mercury – named after a city in Japan [...]
In reviewing workers'’ compensation legislation since 2010, when the conservative majority took over the government in North Carolina, in Part I it was noted that Deputy Commissioners (administrative law judges) will lose their job security, effective July 1, 2015, and that insurance policies can be cancelled easier to help out general contractors, but what else [...]
In 2004 Thomas Frank, a journalist and historian, wrote a book entitled “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” It detailed the rise of political conservatives who obtained power by using hot button social issues, then passed legislation that worked against the economic interests of the vast majority of the citizens of Kansas. North Carolina has become [...]
Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy Today’s post comes from guest author Jon Gelman from Jon Gelman, LLC – Attorney at Law.The Zadroga 9/11 Victims Claim Fund has started to make payments to victims of the World Trade Center attack. First Responders andthose who lived or worked in the immediate geographical site near “ground [...]