Category: LNI News (Page 6 of 22)

Work Injury for Bus Drivers: L&I Issues a New Warning

In my experience, many bus drivers suffer from upper extremity work injury and occupational disease. That’s very unfortunate. There are many reasons for these types of workplace injury and industrial illness. Think about it. Every bus driver can suffer a work injury when applying force (in the arms) to drive the bus. Or, when performing repetitive arm movements to operate bus functions. On top, other bus driver work injury reasons include miscellaneous activities that relate to bus maintenance.

L&I warns about new work injury condition

Everyday work functions are already a reason for concern for bus drivers. If that’s not enough, L&I recently issued new warnings about upper extremity work injury risks. In recent news, the Department of Labor and Industries (L&I) published a bulletin alerting about a recent increase in shoulder injuries for bus drivers. Per L&I, bus drivers for multiple Washington State agencies reported injuries from opening and closing COVID-19 safety shields. Moreover, according to the news bulletin, drivers must repetitively open and close the shields in awkward positions. In fact, they conclude that the poor design of the shields is causing rotator cuff work injury.

L&I takes bus driver work injury occurrences very seriously

L&I developed resources to help Washington State workers and agencies avoid these shoulder workplace injuries. Furthermore, L&I recommends the use of automatic shields instead of manual ones. However, this is not a viable option for many bus drivers. To help, L&I wrote a manual to modify the shield to increase work safety and reduce injuries. I hope that workers and employers follow L&I’s recommendations.

Interestingly, the full L&I Hazard Alert is available in eleven languages. This hazard alert serves a good reminder for everyone. It’s very important to take safety precautions against COVID-19. More importantly, employers should think whether safety measures pose risks relating to injury at work for their own workers.

Work Injury for Temporary Workers: New Law and Historic Legislation

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The Department of Labor and Industries (L&I) has an ongoing safety research project for temporary workers. The goal of the project is to better understand the high frequency of their work injury incidents.

Work injury research project for temporary workers

L&I is working hard to better assess temporary employment injury risk factors. To achieve this goal, L&I is focusing its efforts on:

Measuring the magnitude and incidence of workplace injury of temporary workers compared to standard workers in similar jobs;
Interviewing recently temporary and standard workers with recent work injury to obtain relevant information and ideas for safety improvement;
Interviewing temporary agency and business managers; and
Developing education materials to industries and parties involved in temporary worker employment.

Interestingly, L&I learned that the temporary worker workforce has grown significantly since 1990. In fact, many more industries utilize temporary workers. With this increase, there is a similarly significant rise in the occurrence of workplace injuries amongst temporary workers. This includes particularly hazardous industries like construction and manufacturing.

Temporary worker workplace injury as major concern

L&I is not alone in its research. The United States Department of Labor – OSHA also studies workplace injury occurrences amongst temporary workers. OSHA is concerned that some employers may use temporary workers to avoid meeting safety compliance and protection obligations under the OSH Act. According to OSHA, temporary workers are put in a variety of jobs, including very hazardous ones. These temporary workers are more vulnerable to workplace injury. On top, employers often do not give them adequate safety and health training. Specifically, according to OSHA, both employers and temporary staffing agencies are responsible for these failures. Therefore, OSHA mandates that both employers and temporary staffing companies meet safety and health obligations for temporary employees.

Temporary worker protection in Washington State

The State of Washington recently took a big step to improve protections for temporary workers in our State. Based in part on L&I research and with legislative, business, and temporary staffing agency collaboration, the Governor recently signed SHB 1206. This new law was sponsored by former Washington State Association for Justice (WSAJ) Director, Liz Berry.

The law goes into effect July 25, 2021 and creates new protections for temporary workers. Specifically, it mandates increased communication between temporary staffing agencies and employers regarding safety and training. It also mandates that employers provide safety training to temporary workers. In addition, it requires documentation and record keeping regarding safety inquiries and training. Finally, it forces employers to be transparent about hazards and safety training.

New historic legislation

Based upon my research, this new law affords more protections for temporary workers than in any other state. In fact, many are hopeful that this law will serve as a blueprint for other states to enact similar protections. Hopefully, the adoption of this law will dramatically reduce the occurrence of work injuries among temporary workers. Congratulations to representative Liz Berry, to the Temp Worker Justice organization, to L&I, and to the State of Washington for enacting this historic legislation. To quote Representative Berry:

All Washington workers deserve to be safe at work. This bill will literally save lives and limbs.

L&I Claim Premiums: Amazon’s 15% Workers’ Compensation Rate Increase

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The Department of Labor and Industries (L&I) decided to increase Amazon’s fulfillment warehouse work injury insurance premiums by 15%. Consequently, and according to reports, Amazon is disputing L&I’s basis for the rate hike. Personally, this is nothing new. As always, premium rates are a contentious issue. The reason is simple – higher premiums increase the cost of doing business in Washington State.

Workers’ compensation claim in Washington State

In Washington State, the workers’ compensation claim system is governed by the Industrial Insurance Act (RCW 51). This act outlines the benefits for workers and their dependents in the event of work injury or occupational disease resulting in disability or death. Generally, L&I collects insurance premiums from employers and employees statewide into several funds. In turn, L&I pays benefits to work injury claimants from those funds. In the case of self-insured employers, either the employer or their workers’ compensation insurance company pays benefits to the injured worker.

Work injury insurance

To charge fair premiums, L&I uses a multi-factor system to calculate employer contribution. The goal is for premiums to reflect workers’ risk of injury in their work environment. To accomplish this goal, they calculate workers’ compensation insurance rates on the basis of three factors: (1) Risk classification; (2) Base rates; and (3) Experience.

Risk classifications captures the level of hazard or risk exposure for workers in the workplace. There are over 300 categories in this classification. Naturally, employers with more hazardous work environment pay higher L&I premiums. For example, premiums for indoor office work are significantly lower in comparison to premiums for the logging industry.

L&I calculations

Calculating base insurance rates also involves several factors. Every year, L&I uses five years of L&I claim cost data to calculate the rates for each risk classification. Here, for each business, L&I multiplies the experience factor by the sum of the Accident Fund, Medical Aid Fund, and Stay at Work base rates. That value is added to the base rate for the Supplemental Pension Fund. Every business that uses the L&I work injury insurance program must pay into all four funds. Base rates for the first three funds vary according to risk classification. Furthermore, businesses receive an annual rate notice from L&I summarizing coverage for the upcoming year every December.

Finally, L&I applies an experience factor adjustment to base rates. The experience factor adjusts the base rate by comparing a business’ actual experience with all businesses in the same risk classification. Then, if a business’ actual losses are less than expected, L&I applies an adjustment to reduce premiums for that employer. Similarly, if actual losses are greater than expected loss, then the experience factor will be greater. When this happens, the business is expected to have higher costs than the benchmark for its risk class.

Summary

Since it’s December, L&I’s annual notices just went out. Therefore, it isn’t a coincidence that the Amazon story is in the news right now. Contrary to what the reports may imply, this increase was not to single out and treat Amazon differently from any other employer. In assessing Amazon’s fulfillment warehouse work environment, L&I simply found that the risk classification warrants an adjustment. This kind of adjustment occurs any time L&I finds that current risk classification or experience ratings are inconsistent with the costs and instances of injury in the workplace, for any business.