Think back a few years.

Many in the press and public believed that California workers' comp was rife with worker fraud. The vision was fed by the occasional arrest shown on the 10 o'clock news. Or the story that doctor and attorney mills were feeding on each other, treating workers up the yin yang, ordering every expensive test possible. Billboards plastered over some major metropolitan areas didn't help the perception.

But the perception has changed.

Now there's still focus on employee fraud, but increasing concern about employer fraud.

Marc Lifsher's recent piece in the Los Angeles Times is a good summary of recent efforts to focus on employer fraud. Lifsher's piece is viewable here:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-c ... 3850.story

My earlier blog piece on the issue was "Its the Employer Fraud, Stupid".
That post is viewable here:
http://workerscompzone.com/index.php?en ... 818-110358

Employer comp fraud is costing honest California employers and insurers huge amounts of money.

There's a good chance your local car wash, dry cleaner and your favorite ethnic restaurant aren't covering their employees. It's that bad.

Until the legislature increases penalties for failing to maintain insurance,
enforcement raids seem to be key. But given the how endemic this problem appears to be (along with widespread other labor law violations), the state has a monumental task in educating employers, many of whom are ethnic minorities.

Stay tuned.

Julius Young
www.boxerlaw.com




I

Strange brew-what's inside of you may kill ya. Strange brew. Strange brew.

I'm sitting here pondering the fate of AB 515, a bill currently under consideration in the California legislature that would regulate worker chemical exposures.

I can hear the guitar riffs now. Strange brew, strange brew, strange brew-

Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker. Cream, one of the British pop super groups. Lotsa wailing guitars.

OK. Alright. You caught me. I'm taking artistic license. Perhaps Cream wasn't singing about toxic sludge, carcinogenic emissions, or workplace exposures. For them, it was strange brew-kill what's inside of you.

But it got me thinking about strange toxic brews that thousands of California workers are exposed to at work. Who sets standards for acceptable exposures? Is the seven -member California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board adopting standards tough enough to protect California workers?

AB 515 would require the Board to set long term exposure limits in addition to standards limiting short term exposures.

As many as 44 chemicals on the Prop 65 list as cancer-causers are not subject to any standards for worker exposure.

The result? The public receives general Prop 65 warnings of the presence of cancer causing substances, but workers dealing with the substances day in and day out have little or no protection from the effects of long term exposure. Many of these workers will find themselves on workers' compensation years later, their health in shambles.

The availability of a Material Data Safety Sheet doesn't protect workers from long term exposures.

I know. One of my favorite clients died recently of a form of brain cancer, a cancer quite likely linked to his years of service at a Bay Area oil refinery. I visited him at the Walnut Creek skilled nursing facility where-barely able to sit straight in a chair-he gave a two hour deposition detailing his exposures to a long list of chemicals for over 20 years. At the end, he slumped over, barely able to speak. About a month later he was gone.

It's a debate which is playing out under slightly different circumstances on the Potomac. For background on the Bush administration's attempt to change the standard for measuring worklife exposures, check out the post I did earlier this week. Bush appointees are clearly intent on pushing through the agenda of oil and chemical industry lobbyists.

Here in California, AB 515 sits in a precarious political balance. A similar bill was withdrawn last year. Forces opposing AB 515 include the California Chamber of Commerce and California Manufacturers and Technology Association, groups behind the SB 899 workers' comp reform. These are groups who have a virtual hotline to the Governor's office.

Assemblywoman Sally Lieber (D-Mountain View) has lined up a labor and environmental coalition behind the bill. But it will be yeoman's work to keep the coalition from fracturing since some labor groups have concerns about the effect on jobs in the industries they serve.
It's common for groups to sign on or sign off of major bills like this depending on how they see their interests being affected.

Environmental groups have a big stake in this bill and are are likely to continue the push each year until this bill gets done.

Seeking a legacy of environmental progress, Schwarzenegger might sign the bill? It's not clear.

Want to see an example of why the bill is needed? Look at the investigative series by Susan Sward in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Sward detailed the effects of cancer causing chemicals on workers at a Mojave Desert chemical plant, Searles Valley Minerals:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... amp;hw=sus

Strange and ugly brew.

Stay tuned.

Julius Young
http://www.boxerlaw.com/news.html
(you can subscribe to the blog by clicking on the RSS reader button on the lower right hand column under "Most Recent Entries")

My car keys are on a digital clock that counts down the days, hours and minutes til the end of the Bush Presidency.

This hapless POTUS failed to press a war that needed to be won decisively against the Taliban and Qaeda (Afghanistan) and put us in a war that didn't need to be fought (Iraq). Trillions poorer, while we're nation building in Iraq, we're ever closer to the day when we'll see a nuclear bomb in the hands of Islamists in Pakistan or Iran. Don't get me started. The "war" will not be ending soon, though the focus may be shifting.

But enough of the soapbox. Meanwhile, at home, worker rights have been under attack.

The latest example? Bush appointees are rushing to redefine "working life". It's a concept that has immense consequences for worker safety regulation of on the job toxins.

As of last week, the official proposal had not been publicly announced, but the proposal had been obtained by the Washington Post. The revised regulation would allow business additional rounds of challenges to risk assessments involving chemicals and toxins.

What's the beef over "working life"?

Current regulations assume an average 45 year work life (age 20 to age 65). It's that worklife span that is used to measure the health effects of toxic chemicals on workers.

Bush regulators want to dump the 45 year assumption on the theory that most workers nowadays will not stay at one employer for that long.
The proposal would focus on how long workers actually remain on the job. But that's a difficult concept to measure, and the science behind the changes assumptions may be shaky.

The change has been pushed by industry-friendly conservative think-tanks. For example, the Hudson Institute's Diana Furchgott-Roth did a piece on the issue in the New York Sun. To be fair and present a range of viewpoints, here is Furchgott-Roth's justification for the rule change:
http://www.nysun.com/opinion/battlegrou ... nt=6530008

Congressional committees will be looking at the issue closely. Among those concerned are Ted Kennedy and the Bay Area's George Miller (D-Martinez), whose district includes many workers toiling in chemical plants and oil refineries.

Adding to the concern over the proposed rule is the fact that Bush Administration Labor Secretary Elaine Chao was less than forthcoming about the proposed rule. Public notice of regulatory changes were not filed, and the item only surfaced on the Office of Management and Budget's website (OMB), which indicated it was reviewing the proposal.

This lends credence to the charge that Bush will attempt to give big chemical and manufacturing companies a final present as his administration exits stage right.

Stay tuned. I'll continue to cover the issue.

For those who want to become more involved in workplace safety issues, I'd recommend checking out the website of www.worksafe.org

Julius Young
www.boxerlaw. com
(you can subscribe to the blog by clicking on the RSS reader button on the lower right hand column under "Most Recent Entries")

At a time when workers compensation benefits have been reduced and worker benefit packages shrunk, you'd think that many companies would have "cooled it" on executive compensation.

Not so.

Today's Wall Street Journal article by Ellen E. Schultz and Theo Francis
(see link at the close of my post) investigates the growing practice of funding executive pay packages out of pension funds. Companies doing this-which include the Bay Area's Intel-can get tax breaks intended for pensions of regular workers and use them for executive pay.

This adds further risk to many of the pension plans, many of which are underfunded. In the case of Consolidated Freightways, this type of pension shift resulted in Consolidated having just 79% of the assets it needed for paying obligations. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp
(not the Rock of Gibraltar itself) had to step in.

The Wall Street Journal investigation found that in Intel's case, a majority of the assets in the pension plan are dedicated not to the pension of rank and file workers but rather to the payout of executives who make up only 4% of Intel's workforce.

This blog usually focuses on workers' comp. But it's important to step back sometimes to get the big picture. Workers-including injured workers-are sometimes suffering while the hogs feed at the trough.

Julius Young
http://www.boxerlaw.com/news.html
(you can subscribe to the blog by clicking on the RSS button on the lower right column under "Most Recent Entries")

You can see the Wall Street Journal article here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1217619 ... s_page_one

Those folks in Bentonville are at it again. Wal-Mart is jumping into the political arena.

Today's Wall Street Journal reports that Wal-Mart is organizing all its store managers and department heads to warn that an Obama victory would make it easier for workers to unionize.

Thousands have been summoned to mandatory meetings meetings which
advise about the concern that a Democratic victory could lead to more
union membership.

Wal-Mart is bitterly opposed to the proposed Employee Free Choice Act.
If enacted, the Employee Free Choice Act would allow workers to vote for unions by signing a card rather than just in one secret ballot election. The bill passed the House last year but was taken off the Senate floor after a fillibuster and threatened veto by President Bush.

This comes at a time when Labor Department stats show that workers are losing ground to soaring energy and food costs. Workers are paying a higher share of their benefits. To see some of the stats, click here:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_c ... surge.html

You can find the Wall Street Journal article here:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article_pr ... 03381.html

Stay tuned.

Julius Young
www.boxerlaw.com