No Pain, No Gain?

Why worker's comp is out of control

Charles Oliver from the January 1993 issue

(Page 6 of 6)

To establish job-related stress, a worker complains of headaches, bad dreams, inability to concentrate. If he works around machinery, he says that loud noises startle him. If he works in an office or store, he claims that social contact now leaves him paralyzed by fear. And he goes to a therapist–very likely the one who will collect fat worker’s comp "rehabilitation" payments to treat the worker during his convalescence–to confirm these symptoms. Employers know this, so they hire their own psychologist to examine the worker and fight the claim.

State legislators know California’s system of rewarding stress claims needs to be reformed, but they haven’t been able to make any meaningful changes. In fact, the one change they did make may have made things worse. As part of a 1991 worker’s comp reform package, the legislature changed the threshold for collecting for stress-related disability. Previously, the workplace had to be the "predominant" cause of the stress. But businesses complained that that standard was too vague. So now employees have to prove that at least 10 percent of their stress is job-related–a lower threshold that is just as subjective.

Several different bills to change stress claims were introduced during the 1992 session of the legislature. One would have returned the standard for collecting stress-related disability payments to the old "predominant" cause. Another would have established a 50-percent standard. And another would have entirely eliminated cumulative stress as a disability for most workers. (Firefighters and police officers were excluded.) This bill would have allowed stress claims only for "sudden and extraordinary" job conditions. But intensive lobbying by lawyers led to the defeat of all these proposals.

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