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| | AB 1309 Signed Into Law. Professional Athletes Will Now Stick Within Their Own States.
By Lonce LaMon - October 10, 2013
48 hours ago, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law AB 1309, a measure that finally puts limits on out-of-state professional athletes filing for workers’ compensation benefits in California when they may have barely warmed a bench in California.
This Bill 1309 by Henry Perea, D-Fresno, went through many forms and wound up with a threshold significantly lower than what was written into the first drafts. Over the past several years, millions of dollars in workers’ compensation benefits were paid to mostly retired professional athletes who predominantly played for teams outside of California, and only qualified from having played on a very limited basis on California turf.
This loophole in California law caused the California team employers to carry the greatest burden for workers’ compensation insurance which took monies away from their purses to pay and compete for the choicest athletes. This disproportionate expense also caused workers’ compensation to cost more for all employers in the state.
Now, under the new law, athletes can file for workers’ compensation in the state of California if:
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They played a minimum of two years for California-bases teams, or
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They played 20% or more of their career for California-based teams
But those who played seven or more seasons for out-of-state teams are barred from filing for workers’ compensation in California. This law applies to professional players of baseball, basketball, football, ice hockey, and soccer. It also applies to minor league players. The law is retroactive to September 15th.
SB 1309 was strongly supported by professional team owners within Major League Baseball, and the National Football, Basketball, Hockey League. But opponents said the usual things like what Angie Wei, the legislative director of the California Labor Foundation, said, that this law sets up a “terrible precedent for players and a more dangerous precedent for all workers.”
Setting reasonable limits to employer liability within a state and preventing employees from other states to come in a use a loophole to receive excessive benefits does not set any kind of terrible or dangerous precedent. It sets down balance. It seems that Labor representatives always have to make extreme statements, regardless of the particular situation. They have canned statements written in advance and ready to quote for everything.
A workers’ compensation applicants’ attorney in Santa Ana, one who specializes in representing athletes, Modesto Diaz, said SB 1309 passed because its supporters capitalized on the incorrect belief that taxpayer money is used to pay workers’ compensation claims. Nobody exactly capitalized on any incorrect belief that all taxpayers in California pay for workers’ compensation. Since workers’ compensation is mandatory for all employers, it has more of a feel like a tax to employers than an insurance, because it is mandatory like taxes to homeowners and insurance to automobile owners who drive their vehicles.
The more cumulative claims there are for auto accidents, the more expensive it is for all drivers to drive their vehicles. The more injuries are made compensable in California workers’ compensation, the more it costs to do business and employ in California. And this drives down wages.
Way too often labor can’t see the forest for the trees. Each individual is looking at his own isolated personal self-interest and not at the big picture.
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