This article is another installment of my continuing series entitled, 'The Path to Federalization."
Historical analysis of corporate wealth provides insight as
to why the Nation’s workers’ compensation, conceived as a remedial social
insurance program, has become dysfunctional. The National interest that drives the program is a strong predictor of future coverage for injured workers' and their families.
Over a century ago, in 1911, the US adopted a patchwork of
programs to provide benefits to injured workers in a summary fashion. While
much has changed over the century, the majority of states continue with the
traditional programs, although they are seriously restricted in benefit delivery.
James Surowiecki authored an
article, “Moaning
Moguls,” in this
week’s New Yorker magazine that focuses on why the system has really changed:
“A
century ago, industrial magnates played a central role in the Progressive
movement, working with unions, supporting workmen’s compensation laws and laws
against child labor, and often pushing for more government regulation. This
wasn’t altruism; as a classic analysis by the historian James Weinstein showed,
the reforms were intended to co-opt public pressure and avert more radical
measures. Still, they materially improved the lives of ordinary workers. And
they sprang from a pragmatic belief that the robustness of capitalism as a
whole depended on wide distribution of the fruits of the system.”
***
“If
today’s corporate kvetchers are more concerned with the state of their egos
than with the state of the nation, it’s in part because their own fortunes
aren't tied to those of the nation the way they once were. In the postwar
years, American companies depended largely on American consumers. Globalizationhas changed that—foreign sales account for almost half the revenue of the
S&P 500—as has the rise of financial services (where the most important
clients are the wealthy and other corporations). The well-being of the American
middle class just doesn’t matter as much to companies’ bottom lines. And
there’s another change. Early in the past century, there was a true socialist
movement in the United States, and in the postwar years the Soviet Union seemed
to offer the possibility of a meaningful alternative to capitalism. Small wonder
that the tycoons of those days were so eager to channel populist agitation into
reform. Today, by contrast, corporate chieftains have little to fear, other
than mildly higher taxes and the complaints of people who have read Thomas
Piketty. Moguls complain about their feelings because that’s all anyone can
really threaten. “
As
income inequality continues to fan the stalemate in Washington, there is little hope for a rescue of the nation’s ailing workers’ compensation system from
extinction. Unless corporate greed yields to national interest, workers’
compensation as we now know it, will be subsumed into a program financed by
taxpayers instead of consumers.
….
Jon L. Gelman of Wayne NJ is the author of NJ Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson-Reuters) and co-author of the national treatise, Modern Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson-Reuters). For over 4 decades the Law Offices of Jon L Gelman 1.973.696.7900 jon@gelmans.com have been representing injured workers and their families who have suffered occupational accidents and illnesses.
Click Here to Read More About "The Path to Federalism"
Click Here to Read More About "The Path to Federalism"
