NCAA Athlete Pay Plan Poses WC Challenges

A recent move by the NCAA to adopt a plan to pay college athletes raises questions of workers’ compensation coverage for the players, according to Sports law specialist Michael McCann.
In an op-ed on Sportico, McCann wrote that paying athletes is “a de facto wage to play sports [that] could invite injured players to contend they’re covered by workers’ comp laws.”
He noted that colleges could cite decades-old legal precedents indicating workers’ comp law doesn’t apply, but that the “precedential value of those decisions is highly suspect.”
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Innovative Claim Solutions has been awarded an $8.3 million U.S. Department of Energy contract to run the workers compensation processing program at the agency’s Hanford, Washington nuclear cleanup site.
According to the facility’s website, the program is currently administered by Penser.
In April, the federal energy agency, along with the Washington State Department of Ecology and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a landmark agreement for cleaning up millions of gallons of radioactive and chemical waste from large, underground tanks at the Hanford site.
That same month, it was reported that site workers had received $2.2 billion in benefits, and others could still be eligible for compensation.
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The Legislature of the U.S. Virgin Islands is considering a bill that would combine the Government Insurance Fund and Workers’ Compensation Administration (WCA) under a single entity.
The WCA processes claims for workers who are injured on the job, while the Government Insurance Fund processes employers’ premiums.
Gov. Albert Bryan has proposed the merger to “remove bureaucratic barriers and better support the needs of persons who have been injured in the line of work.”
The bill would also introduce new penalties for employers who don’t provide timely information to the WCA, with penalties starting at $250 and revocation of business licenses in extreme cases.
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