The Legislature’s Committee on Labor and Public Employees, at its March 25 session, approved a number of harmful and costly employee compensation proposals.
All but one of the invoices contain the COVID-19 guess language, which expands and opens the employee compensation program to an immeasurable number of potential applicants.
The committee initially recorded two collective invoices – HB 6595 and SB 1002 – that contain identical titles and the language of the compensation for employees.
A third stand-alone bill passed by the committee, HB 6478, reflects the employee compensation sections and the language in the collective invoices.
COVID-19 presumption
All three proposals contain the following costly requirements that jeopardize the tax stability of the employee compensation system:
- A presumption that an employee who contracted COVID-19 during the public health emergency period contracted it in the workplace regardless of where it was actually affected
- Increase in benefits by 400% and extension of the maximum number of weeks of discretionary benefits for partially permanent disabilities that can be granted
- An increase in employee death benefit from $ 4,000 to $ 20,000
Health care workers
These three bills were passed by the Party Line Voting Committee, with all Democrats voting in favor and all Republicans against.
A fourth bill, SB 660, was unanimously elected from the committee
Like HB 6595, this bill expands employee compensation coverage to include the mental or emotional impairments that all healthcare workers will experience during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The reforms of the employee compensation system in the 1990s excluded benefits for mental and emotional injuries following complaints of frivolous claims.
For more information, please contact John Blair (860.244.1921) of CBIA.
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