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The Business Council of New York State is deeply concerned with a number of bills that have been introduced and are at various stages of the legislative process in both houses. Each of these bills represent further expansion of the workers' compensation system and a proliferation of costs to employers.
In 2017, the Legislature, the Governor, and interested parties negotiated reforms to amend the workers' compensation system. The reform was fair and balanced and offered modest savings to employers while expanding access to benefits to the most injured workers. S.6376-A (Scarcella-Spanton) / A.8482-A (Cruz) ignores those efforts and would act to not only reverse those modest savings but once again send the workers' compensation system down the path of spiraling cost increases year after year. For that reason, The Business Council, on behalf of its more than 3,200 members, opposes this bill.
This bill completely ignores the reforms of 2017 that relieve a significant amount of burden regarding attachment to the labor market. This bill would allow even temporarily injured workers to forgo any attempt at remaining in the workforce should their current employer be unable to offer them other duties. This undermines any attempt to get injured workers speedily back to work, increases the chances of workers remaining out of work indefinitely and increase costs.
Labor market attachment is a fundamental premise in the agreed upon goal of getting injured workers the care they need so that they can return to work. This bill undermines that goal and for that reason, we oppose this bill.