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| | We Have Workers’ Compensation Reform In California. Almost! Just Need The Governor’s Signature.
By Lonce LaMon - September 2, 2012
Happy Labor Day Weekend! On Friday night, the California Legislature worked into the night to pass SB 863. Now all that is needed is Governor Jerry Brown’s signature, which is well known he has already committed to give.
Rarely does Brown indicate which bills he will sign during legislative sessions, but this time with SB 863, he had staff members pulling lawmakers outside the Assembly Chambers and into the halls to pin down their votes.
By 5:30 pm on Friday, the news was out that SB 863 had passed out of the Assembly by a vote of 66 to 4. Then, it moved on to the Senate. By 10 pm, SB 863 was on call on the Senate Floor at 32 to 3. Then the only question remaining at that late hour was the final vote.
But now, alas, it is known that Governor Brown will sign.
The political emphasis this time, with this reform, was heavily in favor of employers, with the ambition to give employers the greatest advantage to grow their businesses and hire more staff in the wake of a brutalizing recession that has decimated job growth. Overlooking many other special interests, the key players in a partnering of business leaders with labor leaders in support of SB 863, saw the essential necessity of acting frenetically and not allowing employers to be burdened with the recommended pure premium rate increase of 12.6% by January of 2013.
In order to grow the California economy and its jobs market, the collective consciousness won the day on Friday night by winning the debate over the order of priorities. And the greatest priority is that California employers cannot be burdened with higher workers’ compensation costs at this time in history.
SB 863 moved through the system at a frenetic pace, driven by the passion to grow jobs in California, as a sub-set of the Nation as a whole. It also moved with a secondary goal of raising permanent disability benefits for injured workers, and compensating for the substantial cuts that were made to permanent disability benefits by Schwarzenegger’s 2004 SB 899.
Thus, the emphasis is now on getting the benefits directly to injured workers, not raising workers’ compensation rates to employers; and cutting out the greedy special interests of applicants’ attorneys, medical providers filing liens, and the inefficiencies and the wastes in the medical treatment system debates which cause delays in treatment and thus add burdening costs to California employers.
As one prominent supporter of SB 863 said on Friday afternoon, “There’s just so much that’s good about SB 863.”
Lonce LaMon, publisher and editor of adjustercom, lonce@adjuster.com
Copyright © Lonce LaMon and adjustercom. All rights reserved.
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