A Century of Workers' Comp
Illustration by George Abe
Dallas Baker, a Seattle firefighter, was rushing to the front of a burning Lake City home six years ago with a bundle of hose on his shoulder when his feet slipped on the grass and his legs went out from under him. He picked himself up and assumed he was fine. But as he was chopping holes in the roof to put out spot fires in the attic, his knee suddenly stiffened, and he found he couldn’t move.
Health insurance paid for Baker’s surgery, but it was Washington’s workers’ comp system that paid 80 percent of his wages during the six weeks it took him to recuperate.
That’s why workers’ comp is there, says Baker. “Sometimes there’s smoke to the floor, it’s pitch black, you can’t see anything and you’re tripping over hose lines and furniture. It’s not if you’re going to get injured, it’s when.” Baker, who is the benefits officer for Firefighters Local 27, can’t understand why anyone would want to change the system.
But business advocates in Olympia say costs are out of control. Washington now has the second-highest level of benefits in the nation, according to the National Academy of Social Insurance.
Gov. Chris Gregoire and a coalition of Republicans and Democrats have been pushing a plan to drastically cut the system’s costs. It would allow the state Department of Labor and Industries (L&I) to offer lump-sum settlements to injured workers in place of pensions. L&I, which manages the program, says thousands of pensioners would rush to settle, and $1.2 billion in long-term liabilities would be eliminated in the first two years alone. And the change might go a long way toward correcting what many, including the governor, call an unsustainable situation in which 8 percent of claims generate 85 percent of costs.
But labor unions are dead set against the measure. It’s the latest chapter in a debate that has raged in the Legislature for years. What’s new is that some of labor’s allies—including Governor Gregoire—warn that failure to reform the system could lead to more radical measures to abolish the program altogether in favor of private insurance.
Rising Premiums for Rising Costs
The program faces many problems. For a start, State Auditor Brian Sonntag says the accident fund has been insolvent for a year and the medical-aid fund is headed the same way. The
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