Boost to spouses seeking workers’ comp
- The Colorado House passed legislation by a vote of 56 to 8 vote to ensure that surviving spouses will receive lifetime death benefits if their spouse is killed on the job.
- Currently, a surviving spouse may be eligible to receive workers’ compensation death benefits for the rest of their life, but if they remarry, they forfeit the right to these benefits.
- This bill would ensure lifetime workers’ death benefits for surviving spouses of state employees with high-risk jobs, even if they remarry.
- The bill defines a job with high-risk classification as State Troopers, Colorado Bureau of Investigations officers, corrections officers, community parole officers, state firefighters, port of entry officers, parks and wildlife officers, and CDOT safety and maintenance workers.
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Kansas looks to change workers’ comp law
- Kansas lawmakers are working toward a compromise bill to modernize the state’s workers’ compensation law.
- The changes could help thousands of Kansas workers injured on the job every year.
- The law, which was last updated in 2011, blocks injured workers from taking in more than $155,000 in workers’ compensation benefits in their life, regardless of the severity of an injury and their ability to return to work.
- Kansas is among 45 states that have no cap on lifetime benefits for permanently disabled workers, but there are now efforts to change the law to remove administrative hurdles to addressing workers’ compensation claims while increasing the benefits available to workers.
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NCCI releases new workers’ comp technology
- The National Council on Compensation Insurance launched a new interactive resource that combines a decade’s worth of data on workers’ comp. claims involving lost-time injuries and insights.
- The Injury Characteristics and Insights dashboard provides an overview of the average cost of lost-time claims by cause of injury, nature of injury, and body part.
- It also features key insights on the most common and most costly injuries as well as injury trends.
- Stakeholders can use this dashboard to benchmark against their book of business to identify opportunities for improving workplace safety, preventing injuries and possibly influencing the outcomes.
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Congress urged to pass the heat bill
- Attorneys general from 10 states are asking OSHA to implement an Emergency Temporary Standard aimed at protecting workers from excessive heat exposure on the job.
- The coalition, led by state attorneys general from Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and D.C., urged Congress to pass the Asuncíon Valdivia Heat Illness, Injury and Fatality Prevention Act.
- If passed into law, the Act would direct OSHA to issue an interim heat standard that would remain in place until a permanent heat standard can be finalized.
- “The action by state attorneys general to pressure OSHA on an emergency heat standard is a vital step to protecting workers this summer,” Juley Fulcher, worker health and safety advocate with Public Citizen, said in a statement.
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