DC Bill Would Protect Injured Government Workers
Thursday, September 6, 2012(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)
Members of
a Fort Totten trash collection crew hospitalized recently due to exposure to
toxic vapors while on the job may face major hurdles when they try to
get the workers’ compensation and health care benefits they need to recover.
“We have advised hundreds of injured workers and seen the obstacles they face
firsthand,” reports Ari Weisbard of the D.C. Employment Justice Center,
where Injured Worker Advocates (at right), a group of injured D.C.
government workers, advocates for greater fairness in D.C.‘s disability
compensation system. Workers injured on the job suffer financial and
emotional hardship when the Office of Risk Management, which administers the
public sector workers' compensation program “keeps coming up with excuses to
suspend their benefits,” says Weisbard. "This is why we need the DC Council to
pass the Injured Government Workers Protection Act, so injured workers will get
the benefits and care they need when accidents like this happen.” In another
example, Andre Brown, a former welder for the DC Housing Authority, was
sprayed with sewage while on the job, causing an infection that destroyed his
heart and liver. “Now, years after this debilitating injury and a
resulting heart and liver transplant, he is in poor health and has severely
limited physical abilities, and the arbitrary suspension of his benefits has
forced Andre into homelessness,” says Weisbard. Introduced by Councilmember
Michael Brown last July and co-sponsored by Councilmembers McDuffie, Alexander,
Barry, and Orange, the Injured Government Workers Protection Act would reform
the workers' comp procedures for injured public sector workers to better protect
them from arbitrary termination or reductions of benefits. Click here to
sign a petition supporting the
Act.