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Arizona Workers’ Comp Compromise

June 11th, 2007 Posted by Mark

There was a compromise recently in the Arizona legislature between supporters of businesses and employers and supporters of labor and workers. The result in the state is something worth taking a few seconds away from our federal minimum wage discussion—just a few seconds!

The compromise has been in the works for a while, but the state Senate just recently passed the workers’ comp bill this past Thursday. That vote, however, was only a preliminary vote in the Senate, and a “real” vote will take place this coming week. If things occur as expected, the bill would then get passed to the House, which would have to agree to changes that the Senate made to the bill. If all goes as planned, the House will sign off on them, and it will go to the governor to sign into law.

Those changes I mentioned include an increase to the monthly cap on how much employees can get when they are injured and disabled. Right now, the cap is at $2400 per month, but that would go up to $3000 in 2008 and then $3600 in 2009 if the law goes through. After that, the cap amount that workers could get per month if injured and disabled would be increased in much the same way some minimum wages are increased every year—by the amount of increase that the cost of living goes up in the state in the previous year.

The reason for the increase to the cap amounts, say law makers, is that the caps currently are low and hurt, so to speak, workers who normally have higher paying jobs but still get injured at work. The monthly cap for these workers might not adequately make up for the money they are losing by not being able to work. And after all, that is the whole point of workers’ comp—to compensate workers for time they miss from work due to work related injuries.

One reason that this big compromise was possible, say my experts, is because otherwise labor supporters had threatened to take the issue to the voters in the form of a ballot initiative, where the Arizona minimum wage was just passed.