Venting on comp

Maine’s lawmakers, who went into the Blue Ribbon Commission process with their eyes wide open and their hands tied behind their backs, have loosened their knots and now are adjusting their blinders.

Two weeks ago, the political process belonged to the commission and the supporters of its 202 pages of recommendations to improve Maine’s Workers’ Compensation insurance system. This week, the momentum has shifted to opponents, labor and other interest groups that consider the report a threat to worker protection and benefits.

Complaints before legislative committees have ranged from the thoughtful to the hysterical. Only a few days old, the document already is the victim of political mythology, such as the often-repeated assertion that it denies workers access to paid attorneys. Not true. Attorneys still can be paid from the proceeds of successfully litigated comp cases.

At the moment, attorneys are paid by employers if the employee prevails in a workers’ comp case. Interesting, isn’t it, that labor groups arguing fairness today were not complaining back in 1984, when Maine law forced employers to pay, win or lose.

The most important thing the commission recommendations attempt to do, a fact apparently lost on just about everyone testifying against its report, is change the workers’ comp culture in Maine by emphasizing mediation and dispute resolution, early in the process.

Some workers seem to be saying they are worried lawyers will lose interest in comp case work if lucrative economic incentives are removed. The commission has a better idea: a system that removes incentives to litigate.

Other employees are concerned about the lack of back-to-work emphasis in the report. A good observation. Again: If the incentive for conflict and litigation is removed from the system, injured workers are more likely to get back to work quickly, or stay on the job in some capacity.

As the orchestrated venting against the blue ribbon report reaches a crescendo, many legislators may want out of their tacit agreement to leave the package of recommendations alone.

Those tempted to tamper significantly with the report, and those who want nothing except the establishment of a new Workers’ Compensation Board, which could study and reform the system later, should step back a moment and think:

By voting for the package, as is, they eventually will get exactly what they want, an opportunity to make amendments to the law via a new process that will involve a balanced labor-management board.

The important difference is that those changes will be made to a Workers’ Compensation culture that will be better for employees and employers than the one Maine has today.

The value of the Blue Ribbon Commission’s work is not its injury thresholds or benefit schedules. If it leaves a legacy, it will be that radically altered culture.