North Carolina To Employers: Pay For Worker Injuries Or Go To Jail

Several business owners in one state will have to cough up some cash for injured employees. Well, that or they can go to jail.

One North Carolina agency is mandating that more than a dozen uninsured businesses come to a hearing on May 22 to settle claims that they weren’t compensating injured workers, the Charlotte Observer reports. If the business owners don't show up for the hearing or don't pay up, they'll reportedly be forced to go to jail.

The call for the hearings comes after an investigation by the News and Observer that found tens of thousands of businesses in the state required to protect their employees with insurance actually don’t.

In North Carolina, a business must carry workers' compensation insurance if it employs three or more workers, has one or more employees using or in the presence of radiation or if the business is in the agricultural or domestic services sector it must employ 10 or more full-time non-seasonal agricultural workers, according to Duncan Law, a North Carolina-based firm.

More than 4 million employees suffer from a work-related injury or illness every year, according to Work Comp News. And more than 2 million workers suffer injuries that are so severe that they have to miss work and need more care.

But even in this environment, employers all over the country are looking for ways to cut insurance costs, which means that workers often get squeezed. In Oklahoma, the Senate passed a bill earlier this week that would allow employers to opt out of the state's workers' compensation program, the Associated Press reports. Big business hailed the legislation, saying it would reduce costs. Critics said it will cut benefits for injured workers.

It’s not just workers' compensation insurance that's facing cuts. The average amount employees paid for insurance through work rose this year, while workers also faced more restrictions on coverage, according to a survey released last month.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post misidentified the source of the investigation into North Carolina business' workers' compensation policies. The News and Observer conducted the investigation.

Comments

[MosesDidItBest]

07:15 PM on 04/19/2012

Some of the biggest insurance fraud is encountered when workers file for injuries incurred on the job. Legitimate claims are routinely denied because the insurance companies know that 10 to 15% of the claimants will walk away out f sheer frustration.

I'm not surprised that so many businesses in North Carolina are illegaly uninsured even though it's the law. My only surprise is that nothing has been done yet. In California there were stiff fines of $10,000.00 per person who were not insured to a max of 100K and a stop order would be issued and the business would be shut down till they met the requirements of the law.

The injuries incurred were never adequately compensated. This is just another denial of protections workers should have. In fact the California Workers' Compensation Law was modelled after a 1918 Russian version of Workers Compensation.

They should go to jail if thats the law, just like the law pertaining to employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens, but that never happens.

I suspect that shortly the GOP will eliminate Workers Compensation regardless of injury because hey, it's all about the "job creators."

[nothingchanges]

04:34 PM on 04/19/2012

About time...............

"Everyone" knows about the employee complaining of a bad back going out water skiing or some other such example of workers compensation fraud.

It does happen, but not with any where near the numbers that most of us are led to believe.

The largest workers compensation insurance company in Colorado, spent over $4.7 million dollars in one year, on thousands of hours of video taping of thousands of "injured workers" and managed to find 10 cases of employee fraud. They did no investigations into fraud perpetrated by employers.

Yet on a National level..........employee workers compensation fraud amounts to a fraction of 1%.

EmployER workers compensation fraud, on the other hand, runs closer to 15%, and is rarely talked about or investigated.

"Corporations are people my friends" and soon they will have more "rights" then we do.

[ttsgw]

03:34 PM on 04/19/2012

This is a breach of free enterprising. The workers don't have to work for these companies and it must be their own fault if they choose doing so. In a corporatocracy like America, the only obligations a company has is to enrich their owners and executives. And the public is only there to serve the corporations. Everything else is communism.

[lawa]

03:32 PM on 04/19/2012

having employers coveriing the cost workers hurt on the job sounds more than reasonable idea it's a liberal idea i realize. not covering is a conservative idea and one that the teabaggers support as cost cutting measures.

[noaxe397]

02:39 PM on 04/19/2012

Here in AZ there is no requirement for a business to carry workers comp, even though most businesses do. In exchange for this the AZ State Constitution prohibits limits on jury awards at trial. Goes back to the territorial days when mining interests controlled the legislature.

[BBackSoon]

01:54 PM on 04/19/2012

Should we be surprised this is a Right to Work state?