Weekly Compensation Benefits Increase in 2004
For these stories and more visit http://www.gelmans.com
***
NY TIMES SERIES - "When Workers Die...."
--When Workers Die (Part 3 of 3): California Leads in Making Employer Pay
for Job Deaths - New York Times (December 23, 2003) (Reg Req'd)
--Sick and Getting Sicker (Editorial) - Los Angeles Times (December 23,
2003) (Reg Req'd)
--When Workers Die (Part 2 of 3): U.S. Rarely Seeks Charges for Deaths in
Workplace - New York Times (December 23, 2003) (Reg Req'd)
--When Workers Die (Part 1 of 3): A Trench Caves In; a Young Worker Is
Dead. Is It a Crime? - New York Times (December 21, 2003) (Reg Req'd)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/21/national/21OSHA.html
***
NJ JUDICIAL PAY RAISE
Pay hike for Jersey officials dies as fast as it is pitched
"By tradition, the wages paid to many other officials are tied to Superior
Court judges' salaries, and that led the commission to recommended
boosting other salaries. Administrative law and workers' compensation
judges traditionally have made 85 percent of what Superior Court judges
bring in, so the commission recommended they earn $134,400."
NJ Star Ledger
http://www.nj.com/statehouse/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-1/1071730661292160.xml
***
ERGONOMICS
Work status after workers' compensation claims for upper limb
musculoskeletal disorders
Two years after the WC claim, 65% of the claimants had returned to work in
the same company, often without any ergonomic improvement, 12% had retired
or had left employment voluntarily, and 18% had been dismissed. The risk
of dismissal was associated with three factors: being older than 45 years,
having two or more MSDs at claim, and working in the cleaning services
sector.
http://oem.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/abstract/61/1/79?etoc
***
PRIVACY
Tracking employees through global positioning and electronic toll payment
systems
This Car Can Talk. What It Says May Cause Concern.
NYTimes
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/29/technology/29car.html?th
***
NJ WORKERS ARE SAFER
New Jersey citizens work in safer and healthier environments than the
national average, according to the 2002 Survey of Occupational Injuries
and Illnesses released Thursday by the New Jersey Department of Labor in
cooperation with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
http://www.state.nj.us/labor/press/1218_OHSS.htm
***
WC REFORM TRENDS
Real Reform Will Take More Than Muscle
"Industry knows that workers' comp costs have risen precipitously since a
soft market of the late 1990s, but most of the California public is
clueless. The price of three pounds of tomatoes at Safeway in 1999
included roughly two cents for workers' comp costs. Today it's 10 cents."
http://www.riskandinsurance.com/1201_column_1.asp
***
FATIGUE CAUSING MORE CLAIMS
Fatigue Levels Rising in Extended Hours Operations, Leading to a 15X
Increase in Workers' Compensation Claims
2004 Shiftwork Practices Survey Benchmarks Absenteeism and Turnover,
Documents the Costs of Employee Fatigue
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/031210/new006_1.html
***
NJ MANUFACTURER CHARGED WITH 8 YR CONSPIRARCY TO POLUTE AND EXPOSE
EMPLOYEES
Tom Sansonetti, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department's
Environment and Natural Resources Division, and Christopher J. Christie,
U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, today announced that a federal indictment
was unsealed in Trenton, N.J., charging a Phillipsburg, N.J. manufacturer
of cast iron pipe and five of its managers with committing flagrant
environmental abuses, including regular discharge of oil and paint into
the Delaware River and maintaining a dangerous workplace that contributed
to the death of one employee and the maiming of numerous others.
http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2003/December/03_enrd_691.htm
***
CALIFORNIA
Schwarzenegger's workers' compensation plan
A look at some of the key provisions in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's
workers' compensation bill
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/7586776.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
***
HIGH PRICE OF BACK SURGERY
An Operation to Ease Back Pain Bolsters the Bottom Line, Too
A complex operation called spinal fusion has emerged as the treatment of
choice for many kinds of unrelenting back pain. A quarter million of the
procedures, in which metal rods are screwed into the spine to stabilize
it, were performed this year in the United States, three times as many as
a decade ago.
But a number of researchers say there is little scientific evidence to
show that for most patients, spinal fusion works any better than a simpler
operation, the laminectomy. And laminectomies get patients out of the
hospital and back to their daily routine much faster. Some people, experts
add, would be better off with no surgery at all. Even doctors who favor
fusions say that more research is needed on their benefits.
In the absence of better data, critics in the field point to a different
reason for the fusion operation's fast rise: money.
NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/31/business/31BACK.html?ei=5007&en=d27cbdfd4346757e&ex=1388206800&partner=USERLAND&pagewanted=print&position=
***
CALENDAR
--Friday, February 20: Healthy Schools Forum, Cosponsored by WEC, the
Education Law Center and others. (Rutgers University, Livingston Campus
Center, New Brunswick.) For more information, contact the ELC at (973)
624-1815
--Wednesday, April 14: Top Ten Hot Issues in Workers'Compensation - NJ
ICLE, New Brunswick, NJ
www.njicle.com
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