Just when the comp community thought furloughs were over, they're back again.

The California Supreme Court has agreed to hear the legality of last year's furloughs. But that case will not be decided for some time.

With efforts to reduce state worker pay to minimum wage levels tied up in Sacramento County Superior Court and with the state budget negotiations at an impasse, Schwarzenegger has reverted to state worker furloughs.

This time SCIF employees will be exempted. Also to be exempted are employees of some agencies that bring in money, like the Franchise tax Board. And some workers who recently agreed to contract concessions
in bargaining are excluded from furloughs.

Noticeably absent from those exempted are employees of the Department of Industrial Relations, including employees of the California Division of Workers' Compensation. Yet again the Governor has refused to acknowledge that employer assessments supposedly create a user funded system.

In January 2010 the Legislative Analyst Office (LAO) questioned salary reductions of state personnel funded through targeted and user funded mechanisms. The LAO noted that "the administration has not put forth a credible rationale" why reductions should be extended to personnel expenses funded by special funds, federal funds or other non-governmental funds".

A bill was introduced to address this issue. SBX8 29, carried by California Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, proposed to exempt employees funded at least 95% by sources other than the General Fund. The bill was vetoed by the Governor:
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postq ... =steinberg

So unless there's a quick budget agreement, it's likely we'll be back to furloughs soon. Despite court battles over their legality, no court order was able to stop the furloughs during the 2009 budget cycle.

Most DWC personnel prefer the furloughs to pay cuts. At least they can use the time off.

I was told by several DWC employees that they made up in overtime pay what they would have been paid but for the furloughs. So some employees may do OK.

Some attorneys have told me that they have coped with the furlough days be scheduling depositions, informal settlement conferences and mediations on furlough blackout days.

But the undeniable effect of the furloughs is that the doors of the hosue of justice are blacked out three days per month. Trial time is reduced, and the wait for getting a case on calendar will be longer.

All of this in a user funded system....

Here's a link to a post I did, "Assessing Assessments", which quotes extensively from a piece done by David DePaulo, publisher of Workcompentral.....In trenchant comments, DePaulo rails against the disconnect between large increases in assessments and furloughs...
Check it out:
http://www.workerscompzone.com/index.ph ... 129-222117

Stay tuned.

Julius Young
www.boxerlaw.com

We're heading to mid-summer.

Many of us have more interest in the ice cream flavors at the shop down the road than we do in what workers' comp cases are up on a writ or when that think tank is releasing another study.

Gotta hand it to California. We are cutting edge here. My favorite local shop in Berkeley is now into herbal and spice based ice creams. Allspice. Lemon Thyme. Bay Leaf.

But if you're reading this space instead of Wiki-leaked documents about treacherous Pakistani double dealing, you must be hard core.

And so you'll want to know that Joe Matthews sees another workers' comp reform coming.

Mathews is an astute observer. Those who never read his history of the Schwarzenegger recall of Gray Davis might want to pick up a copy. That's "The People's Machine: Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Rise of Blockbuster Democracy":
http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-Machine-S ... 1586482726

After all, you should know a little history. Who were the carrot people, after all? They are still very much around.

Mathews, a former L.A. Times reporter, is now a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of "California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It".

Mathews notes that there are four major legs to the workers' comp table.

Employers are one leg, of course. Insurers are another. Medical providers are a third leg. Labor and the attorneys who represent workers are a fourth leg.

Mathews observes that six years after the 2004 reforms:
"the aggrieved parties are injured workers and medical providers who have found it difficult to get paid."

Continuing, Matthews claims that :
"they have a third leg of the four- legged stool joining them; insurers have seen a big decline in their premiums (for reasons that are disputed). Only businesses remain happy."

Since I started doing the blog I've had a number of employer lobbyists assure me that employers and insurers were joined at the hip, happy with the reforms and in constant contact.

That embrace may be starting to sour a bit.

Stay tuned.

Soon I''ll be posting about the Top 10 Developments in California Comp in the 1st half of 2010. I'll also be covering the 6th District Court of Appeal Decision in Guzman which will likely be coming down shortly.
And I'll be making an announcement about a major new project I'm involved in.

Here's a link to the Joe Mathews piece:
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/blogs/prop ... 75014.html

Julius Young
www.boxerlaw.com

Many of my Northern California readers know that all roads run through Oaktown.

Not literally, of course, but Oakland, site of my Boxer & Gerson office, really is the heart of the Bay Area. It's where the burbs of CoCo County meet, where the North Bay begins to transition into the South Bay.

Reputedly a place where there is "no there there", its a place where many different ethnic enclaves intermingle, a place of mean streets, hipsters in lofts, hillside architectural gems, and more good restaurants on one mile (College Avenue) than in some whole upper middle class counties in the Golden State.

Oakland is also home to many of the key players in workers' comp.

The Callifornia Workers' Compensation Institute, an insurance industry organization, is headquartered here. The WCIRB (Workers Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau) is here. The Division of Workers' Compensation has administrative offices in Oakland. The Commission on Health, Safety and Workers' Compensation is headquartered here. Non-profits dealing with worker safety, such as Worksafe, are sited here. And of course, the WCAB has a large district office in Oakland.

Federal deficit commission members Erskine Bowles and former Senator Alan Simpson have noted that the United States has cancer; a cancer of debt that could destroy our economy and way of life as we know it.

But if the country has cancer, so does Oakland.

The Oakland City Council has given pink slips to 80 police, about 10% of the force. With the city out of money and facing huge shortfalls, cops agreed to contribute more to pensions if they were promised job security. Rather than make cuts in libraries and some other services, the Council has decided to issue the layoff notices. Without passage of higher taxes, cuts could be deeper next year.

It's ironic that this comes after a second round of downtown violence following protests over the BART officer shooting of a young African American male.

Our office, like most in downtown Oakland, emptied out early last week as word arrived that the jury verdict in the Oscar Grant shooting would be forthcoming within the hour.

At least four depositions set of clients with Boxer & Gerson clients were immediately canceled as court reporters waited in our lobby for the lawyers to arrive. As streams of workers left downtown, police were gathering around our building and around the sites of many of the other workers' comp offices.

After several hours of peaceful speeches and protests, some looting ensued. It appears that some of the damage was led by anarchists and
graffiti spraying protesters. Of course, black owned businesses were not spared from the damage.

If you've seen a TV screen in the past week you probably know most of that.

But it's disconcerting to see the heart of the Bay Area on economic life support.

Many of us in the "comp community" like Oakland. We may live here, or we come here to work and get used to its gritty charms and its fab weather.

I'll bring you more on this story from time to time.

Julius Young
www.boxerlaw.com

Last month I noted in a post "Nail Biters" that Assemblywoman Mary Salas had nudged out former Assemblyman Juan Vargas in a race for the Democratic nomination in the 50th Senate District.

Not so. The margin between Salas and Vargas was not more than a few hundred votes. As some slow returns filtered in, Vargas took a small lead.
There were over 12,000 Riverside County ballots that had not been tallied.

With those ballots in, Vargas had a 22 vote lead. Vargas declared victory today in the primary. The 50th stretches across parts of San Diego, Imperial and Riverside Counties. The winner of a Democratic primary in the district is basically assured of election in November.

There's word tonight that Salas has requested a recount.

This is a bitter battle that has attracted major interest from various California interest groups. Vargas attracted large amounts of cash from insurance interests and tort reform groups.

Millions, actually.

Salas was backed by applicant attorneys, trial lawyers and most unions. I'm aware of only one union backing Vargas, AFSCME.

Although I cover some of the legislative background from time to time, you, dear reader, may be wondering why the fascination with this race.

Consider the picture. Business interests smell blood.

They seek a more receptive audience in the legislature if there is a Brown administration. The goal will be to find some Democratic votes to block legislation.

And if Whitman is elected, those interests seek Democratic friends who will join with Republican minorities to move legislation.

Holding onto Democratic California Senate seats is not a forgone conclusion.

State Senator Dean Florez is termed out. Kern County Supervisor Michael Rubio is seeking to replace him, but issues have arisen regarding whether Rubio resides in the district.

In a coastal counties district, State Senator John Laird survived to fight another day in a runoff, but faces a tough race against the GOP's Sam Blakeslee. The runoff is scheduled for August.

It's all inside the beltway River City stuff that many readers may find as interesting as watching paint dry.

But there's a reason why people who do care are pouring millions into these races. They matter.

Politics is sometimes played as a blood sport. These races are prime examples.

Stay tuned for my piece on the Top 10 developments in California workers' comp in the first half of 2010.

Julius Young
www.boxerlaw.com

Hey, it's not Aaron Burr versus Alexander Hamilton. No dueling pistols here.

But we are in modern times. We have dueling lawsuits.

This time it's Arnold Schwarzenegger versus State Controller John Chiang.

Schwarzeneger has filed to get a court order to force Chiang to cut state woker pay to minimum wage levels while the state has no budget. Chiang has filed his own action, seeking to throw out the order to cut salaries that was sent to him from Schwarzenegger's Department of Personnel Administration.

Here's more on the Chiang lawsuit in a piece by Wyatt Buchanan from the San Francisco Chronicle:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... &tsp=1

It's a duel of great interest to the folks who work for DIR/DWC and the WCAB.

Stay tuned.

Julius Young
www.boxerlaw.com