But Mr. Miller, director of workers compensation and disability consulting for Actuarial Sciences Associates, Inc. of Somerset, N.J., and Mr. Oxfeld, the president of UWC-Strategic Services on Unemployment & Workers Compensation in Washington, were not in total agreement on details.

They differed on one key aspect of what might be included in new regulations that are likely to replace the Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards that were rejected by Congress in March with a Joint Resolution of disapproval.

In answer to a question from panel moderator Sam Friedman, National Underwriter property and casualty edition editor-in-chief, Mr. Miller said he thought any new regulation would not include wage replacement payments for workers with ergonomic injuries.

“What they wont do is have federal benefits,” he said, stating that that notion was “dead.”

Mr. Oxfeld said he hoped Mr. Miller was right, but he pointed out that when worker safety standards were adopted for lead exposure, without including compensation, unions sued to include such a provision.

He advised, with certainty, that OSHA, which is now having field hearings on the question, would develop “a standard with a capital S,” because, he said there is strong political pressure in Washington to do something.

Both Mr. Oxfeld and Mr. Miller gave extended discourses on defects in the now-dead standards, which they said would have had a devastating effect on state workers compensation systems.

Mr. Oxfeld noted that OSHA would have given wage replacement for ergonomic injury at a higher rate than the states–90 or 100 percent of net pay compared, say, with Florida, where the rate is two-thirds of net pay.

Unlike state systems, OSHA would have set no caps on weekly benefits and would have paid them with no waiting period.

Mr. Miller said the standard would have “triggered an unparalleled opportunity for fraud and abuse.” He wondered if employers had any employees who wouldnt be willing to “stay home for 90 days at 90 percent pay” as they could have under the proposed standard.

Mr. Oxfeld said the standard, by requiring employers to make payments that they were not insured for and circumventing the workers comp system, would have trampled the legal principle that makes workers comp the exclusive remedy for employee on-the-job injury claims.

Mr. Oxfeld said the staff of OSHA “do not get it, when it comes to workers compensation.”

He said they had this attitude in spite of a provision in a section of federal law that prohibits any OSHA standard that would “supersede” or in any manner “affect” state workers compensation.

He urged his listeners to get involved in the legislative process and to let Congress know their concerns about the workers comp system. His business advocacy group, he said, needs voices with an understanding of the system because, “no one at OSHA has the slightest idea.”

The conference in Orlando, which includes the Annual Florida Safety & Health Conference of the Florida Safety & Health Institute, was put on by the Florida Workers Compensation Institute in partnership with The National Underwriter Company (the parent company of this newsmagazine).

Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, September 3, 2001. Copyright 2001 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.

Contact Webmaster