Reform Retro!

The following has been adapted from Washington State 1911 Workmen’s Compensation Act: A Look at the Newspaper Coverage By Ryan Deibert

http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/strike/deibert.shtml)

Between 1890 and 1910, economic development in Washington State was fueled primarily by extractive industries, particularly the booming lumber industry, which employed in 1910 nearly seventy-five percent of all workers in the state.  Industrial accidents were common among workers in the logging industry, and a general progression of court rulings in employer liability cases shifted from conservative common-law-based rulings that placed heavy burdens on employees to prove employer negligence to more liberal rulings with increasing favor toward injured workers and subsequent awarding of large damage claims.  This movement gave rise to increasing industry concern toward settlement of employee injury claims through established legal processes.  Business leaders called for a “no-fault” State – run way to settle workers compensation claims outside of the court room.

Leading up to and during the twelfth session of the Washington State Legislature from January through March, 1911, representatives of organized labor in Washington worked with leaders of industry and state political leaders to pass one of the earliest state-level workers’ compensation acts in the United States. 

A March 12, 1911 editorial by Seattle Times owner Colonel Blethen predicted that the Workers Compensation law would destroy the State’s economy:

“For absolute disregard of duty -- of the best interests of the public -- and for the creation of burdensome laws and the squandering of the public moneys -- the Twelfth Legislature of Washington surpasses all the efforts made along these lines by the preceding eleven legislative bodies which have met since Washington became a state . . . [The Workers Compensation law] places a burden upon the industries of this Commonwealth that will break many of them -- entirely destroy the profits of others and will prevent new capital entering the state at all.”

( “A Legislative Body That Will Go Down in History as the Most Vicious in the Annals of Washington,” Editorial, Seattle Daily Times, March 12, 1911. p. 6).

By contrast, the Seattle PI supported the new law: The PI ran an article summarizing the successful defense of the law through legal challenges before the State Supreme Court. The article touted Washington State as “the pioneer state in attempting to solve the problem of compensating injured workingmen and their dependents without the great cost and numerous delays that are now features of such actions.”

An accompanying editorial in the same edition offered the “novel” legislation measured praise, stating that it was “aimed to meet and to do away with a large number of evils,” including exploitative insurance companies and “ambulance chaser” attorneys.  The editors concluded: “If the law proves a success, there is no question that it will be taken up in all other progressive states.” ( “Compensation Act Is Now Effective,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer. October 2, 1911. p. 3).

Clearly very little has changed since 1911. The Seattle Times is still claiming that any bills intended to protect workers will destroy the State’s economy while the Seattle PI is still generally supportive of workers rights.

Our State’s Workers Compensation Program – which is simply a publicly run health insurance agency -  worked very well up until about 1980. Workers were protected with some of the highest benefits in the nation and administration costs were among the lowest in the nation.

However, with the 1980 “Reagan Revolution” there was a call towards deregulation of the Workers Comp program and “greater flexibility.” Construction companies in particular claimed that they could greatly reduce rates if there was an “incentive” returning any savings back to the companies who lowered their claims costs. Thus the Retro Refund program was born.

In the 1980’s, the Retro program was small and there was little additional cost to tax payers. However, after the computer coding “errors” in 1994,  retro programs began raking in millions in tax payer subsidies.

Unfortunately the radical shift to the right in the past few years – largely due to the BIAW diverting millions of tax payer dollars into subverting hundreds of political elections - may spell an end to our Workers Compensation program almost exactly 100 years after it started.