Sacramento, CA - Injured workers’ advocates today responded to the Workers Compensation Appeals Board’s (WCAB) granting reconsideration of its decision allowing injured workers to challenge the administration’s permanent disability rating schedule.

“The WCAB’s recent decisions are necessary clarifications of the 2004 statutory changes. The decisions are in line with what has been done in other states that use the AMA guides, and a long tradition of California’s own case law regarding rating permanent disabilities. Many other states supplement the AMA guides, as appropriate. We hope the WCAB’s reconsideration is not a response to the intense political pressure being put on the WCAB to decide these cases based on factors other than the law and the facts,” said Todd McFarren, president of CAAA, whose members represent workers injured on the job. “CAAA will submit a friend of the court brief in this case. We believe the board’s unanimous decision was well reasoned, based on the statutes, and the basis for the decision will be strengthened through any broad review. We are confident the Board will reconfirm its original scholarly and articulate opinion.”

McFarren said the board’s recent decisions in the combined Almaraz/Guzman cases and the Ogilvie case “allow judges to fairly assess injured workers’ actual permanent disabilities and lost wages, because the decisions allow the court to look at all the factors of disability.”

Judges, however, will “still be handcuffed by the administration’s inadequate permanent disability schedule,” McFarren said. “The administration has not addressed the fundamental flaws in its disability rating schedule. We’ve been waiting more than a year for the governor to approve his own administration’s proposal to restore a small percentage of the permanent disability compensation he cut by 50% to 70%.”

California remains well below neighboring and comparable US states, in compensating permanently disabled workers. “This decision does not fix the harm done to injured workers. California workers permanently disabled on the job would still receive compensation that is among the lowest in the nation under this decision, even if the minor increase proposed by the governor is finally adopted," said McFarren.

Multiple independent studies, including studies conducted by the California Commission on Health, Safety and Workers Compensation (CHSWC), have documented fifty to seventy percent cuts in compensation for permanent disabilities.