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. [...]
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 [...]
North Carolina State Legislative Office Building This week Senate Bill 174 passed the House Committee with some changes that preserve the rights of injured workers' to have telephone hearings to get their benefits restarted and medical treatment expedited. For at least the past five years, injured workers' have had the right to have emergency medical [...]
Over the past few years, many states have aggressively gone after workers' compensation fraud (whether it's the employee or the employer) and the amount of employer fraud being discovered continues to be staggering, notwithstanding these efforts. Legitimate business owners that pay for workers' compensation, as required by law, are at a competitive disadvantage with those [...]
Federal law provides that employers with 15 or more employees cannot discriminate against employees because of genetic information.Under a 2009 Federal law called GINA (the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act), employers with 15 or more employees cannot discriminate against employees because of genetic information. That information may include a past or present medical history (for example: [...]
Last Friday (June 22, 2012) the NC Legislature passed an insurance bill (HB 237), allegedly to help the N.C. Industrial Commission track employers to make sure they obey the law and purchase workers'’ compensation insurance when they have three or more employees. This bill keeps information confidential that is sent from the Rate Bureau (the [...]
Today’s post comes to us from my colleague Jon Gelman of New Jersey. The National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH) has published educational information to prevent musculoskeletal injuries at work. Injuries caused by ergonomic factors have been a major issue of the Federal government for decades and have been the basis for repetitive [...]