Underpayment of Wages Impact Workers’ Compensation Claims

The underpayment of wages due workers impacts the calculation of benefits that injured workers and their dependents receive. States are now enforcing laws when inadequate wages have been paid workers.

Massachusetts Reaches Workers' Compensation Rate Settlement

Massachusetts businesses will save approximately $150 million under a settlement Attorney General Maura Healey reached with the State Rating Bureau (SRB) and the Workers’ Compensation Rating and Inspection Bureau (WCRIB). The settlement, which follows the AG’s intervention in an administrative rate proceeding at the Division of Insurance, results in an average rate rollback of 12.9 percent on workers’ compensation insurance in the state.

Low-Wage Workers Finding It’s Easier to Fall Into Poverty, and Harder to Get Out

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — At 7 in the morning, they are already lined up — poultry plant workers, housekeepers, discount store clerks — to ask for help paying their heating bills or feeding their families.

And once Metropolitan Ministries opens at 8 a.m., these workers fill the charity’s 40 chairs, with a bawling infant adding to the commotion. From pockets and handbags they pull out utility bills or rent statements and hand them over to caseworkers, who often write checks — $80, $110, $150 — to patch over gaps in meeting this month’s expenses or filling the gas tank to get to work.

McDonald's Accused of Stealing Wages From Already Underpaid Workers

Wage are the basic factor upon which to calculate rates for workers' compensation purposes.
Today's post was shared by Mother Jones and comes from www.motherjones.com

Fast food workers make very little money. How little money? Very little money! So little in fact that a single parent of one living in New York City would have to work 144 hours a week "to make a secure yet modest living." But apparently, those wages are not low enough, a group of McDonald's workers allege, to stop the company from also stealing from them. Wage-theft suits brought against McDonald's this week in Michigan, California, and New York accuse the chain of refusing to pay overtime, ordering people to work off the clock, and straight up erasing hours from timecards. If these allegations are true, and maybe they're not, but maybe they are, then the company has been illegally screwing people who are already being legally screwed. This is the most recent development in a months-long campaign by fast-food workers pushing for a $15/hour starting wage. You shouldn't eat fast food because fast food is bad for you but if you do eat fast food (and you will eat fast food at least once in a while because nobody can be perfect all the time), be nice to the people who serve you. They have to fight tooth and nail to make ends meet. Could you make it on fast food wages? Here's a depressing calculator. (Spoiler: Probably not!)

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Where Have All the Raises Gone?

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com

Most people who work for a living know that for a long time now, raises have been few and far between. Wages typically fall or stagnate in recessions, and the Great Recession was particularly severe, exerting a drag on pay that persists to this day. But that is only a partial explanation, because declining and stagnant wages predate the latest downturn. Understanding the causes is essential for determining the policies needed to create good jobs. Research by three economists — Paul Beaudry, David Green and Benjamin Sand — goes beyond familiar explanations for wage stagnation like global competition and labor-saving technology. Examining the demand for college-educated workers, they found that businesses increased hiring of college graduates in the 1980s and 1990s in adapting to technological changes. But as the information technology revolution matured, employer demand waned for the “cognitive skills” associated with a college education. As a result, since 2000, many college graduates have taken jobs that do not require college degrees and, in the process, have displaced less-educated lower-skilled workers. “In this maturity stage,” the report says, “having a B.A. is less about obtaining access to high paying managerial and technology jobs and more about beating out less-educated workers for the barista or clerical job.” The findings help to explain the trajectory in wages for workers with...

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