By Steve and Inman & Fitzgibbons
Several bills are currently pending before the Illinois House and Illinois Senate in an effort to bring Governor Rauner’s goal for workers’ compensation reform to fruition. Below is a summary of those pending bills, many of which are similar and thus included in the same description.
SB 771, SB 1284, HB 2420 Provides that no employer shall be required to pay temporary partial disability or maintenance benefits to an employee who has been discharged for cause. Provides that, following a hearing, the Illinois Workers' Compensation Commission may reinstate the temporary partial benefits or maintenance and retroactively restore any benefits the employer should have paid if it finds the employer's discharge of the employee was not for cause. Effective immediately if it becomes a law. (Note: the proposed amendments in SB 771, SB 1284, and HB 2420 include identical language, the only notable differences being where the bills originated and the political affiliations of their respective sponsors.)
SB 0769 Amends parts of Section 10 (820 ILCS 305/10) having to do with how wages and the determination of an average weekly wage are computed, including those cases in which concurrent employment is alleged. It changes three things: (1) deletes the language in the current version of Section 10 regarding “shall be divided by the number of weeks and parts thereof remaining after the lost time has been deducted” and instead total earnings are divided by the number of weeks worked, no matter if the employee worked only partial or whole weeks; (2) when the employment is non-continuous or less than full time or the employee lost one or more calendar days during that period, then the employee’s earnings shall be divided by the number of weeks that the employee worked, regardless of the number of hours worked during that week; and (3) adds a provision, that in such concurrent employment situations, each week during which the employee earned wages for all concurrent employers counts as “one week for purposes of computation” (of the AWW), regardless of the number of hours worked during those weeks (i.e., the employee’s days and hours cannot be combined to create weeks to calculate AWW).
SB 1283 Amends the Workers' Compensation Act. It clarifies that injuries to the shoulder are deemed to be injuries to the arm and injuries to the hip are deemed to be injuries to the leg. If enacted, it will become effective immediately.
SB 772 Changes the causal relationship from being “a factor” to the “major contributing cause” of the injured worker’s injury; amends the Workers' Compensation Act to establish the manner of computing compensation for partial disability, with a maximum cumulative compensation of 500 weeks; also provides that injuries to the shoulder and hip are deemed to be injuries to the arm and leg respectively; provides for the computation of compensation when there are multiple employers and when there is less than full-time work (similar to SB 769).
SB 770, HB 2418 Defines “traveling employee” and specifies that injury while in travel status is compensable only if it arises out of and in the course of employment while employee is actively engaged in duties of employment;. specifies that accident must be major contributing cause of any resulting injuries, meaning more than 50% of the cause for the injury as compared to all other causes combined; provides that “injury” includes the aggravation of a pre-existing condition by an accident, but if the accident is the major contributing cause; and provides that injury resulting directly or indirectly from idiopathic cause is not compensable.
HB 1287 Makes technical amendments to the Prevailing Wage Act, but with recent amendments added (on 5/21/15) to what is otherwise a fairly benign bill (sponsored by House Speaker Madison), it would including changes to the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Act including: (1) establishing a “major contributing cause” standard, (2) clarification as to the AMA guidelines and greater weight afforded to an AMA rating in evaluating permanency, (3) another across the board 30% cut to the Medical Fee Schedule, and (4) regulations on WC insurance rate premiums including a safety premium and self-insured fee reductions.
