|
|
Submit your e-mail address to
receive press releases & newsletters from the PFIW.
|
| |
 |
| |
|
Working Families
e-activist
allows you to
give your opinion on important issues for workers to the Legislators |
| |
The American Law Journal is the weekly, award
winning legal talk/feature show on the law.
It airs on
Mondays at 8 PM on WFMZ-TV in Philadelphia. It also broadcasts
seasonally on CN8, The Comcast Network.
American Law
Journal |
| |
 |
| |
|
ABILITIES IN MOTION
is dedicated to advancing the rights
of persons with disabilities in order to promote a full life in the
community through the prevention and elimination of physical,
psychological, social and attitudinal barriers which serve to deny them
the rights and privileges common to the general public.
|
| |
|
Pennsylvania
Council of Churches |
| |
Remember those who died on the job and pray for their
families.
MAK |
| |
| |
October 29, 2002
Injured Workers Forced to Submit to an Interview with a
Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor
Expressed opinion by Michael A. Kerstetter, PFIW
Dauphin County
Once again the injured
worker gets the short end of the stick. Section 314 of the Pennsylvania
Worker's Compensation Act forces injured workers to submit to an interview with
any expert hired by an employer/worker's compensation insurance company.
This is not fair for a couple of reasons:
- The
employer/insurance company will shop around and find an expert that will do or
say whatever is needed to help in the effort of reducing or eliminating an
injured workers benefits. Most of the Vocational Rehabilitation experts
that are hired by an employer/worker's compensation insurance company
advertise that they will have a positive outcome after their services are
used. In actuality what they do is bully an injured worker to attend job
interviews they know an injured worker is unable to do therefore placing an
injured worker in a position where he/she has to except some form of
employment or loose their worker's compensation benefits. Vocational
Rehabilitation suggests that an injured worker will be trained or
rehabilitated to return back to work. This never happens because the
injured worker is never sent to school for any type of training to return back
to work in a meaningful job. That costs money and that is not what they
were hired to do. Instead injured workers are forced to accept
meaningless minimum wage paying jobs that are usually temporary in nature.
This only serves the purpose of getting an injured worker back to work whether
or not they are able to do so. The Pennsylvania Legislators were really
looking out for the injured worker on this one!
- An injured worker has
the right to have his/her own expert do an interview to counteract the
employer/worker's compensation insurance company. Where does an injured
worker get the money to pay for such an interview. It costs thousands of
dollars for this service and an injured worker does not have the resources to
do this. How is this fair?
- These vocational
experts contacts parties associated with an injured workers claim via ex-parte
communication and claim to be acting on behalf of the injured worker.
That is an out right lie, the injured worker is the last person who would have
any of these so called experts act on their behalf. This gets them
reports and evaluations that are fraudulent in nature because they were gained
by misrepresentation. The injured worker never requested the vocational
rehab expert to do anything on their behalf, by claiming so makes it fraud.
Unfortunately there are few attorneys that will protect their clients from
this type of fraud. It would cost to much and take to much time.
- Vocational experts
encourage injured workers to not say anything about their disability during a
job interview because it may cast rejection on the employment process.
This a form of fraud by omission and hired experts of employers/worker's
compensation insurance companies encourage this course of action. After
the injured worker is hired and the employer finds out that they were deceived
by the injured worker about a pre-existing worker related injury they can be
fired for filling out a fraudulent job application. These vocational
rehabilitation experts tell injured workers that if they say anything about
their disability they are not showing good faith in finding a job and their
worker's compensation benefits will be terminated if they do so.
Back in 1998 Senate
Hearings were held by Senator Gib Armstrong, Chairman of the Labor & Industry
Committee, on the very subject of vocational rehabilitation experts. These
hearings revealed that the vocational rehabilitation experts were nothing more
than a way for employers/worker's compensation insurance companies to end or
reduce an injured workers compensation benefits and an avenue for perpetrating
fraud on an injured worker. At that time the use of vocational rehab
experts was supposed to be put on hold until measures were put into place to
stop this use of the experts. There was a brief cooling off period after
the hearings and many cases came to a halt because there was no way for the
employer/worker's compensation insurance company to substantiate their claims in
court without expert testimony. Just recently the Director of the Worker's
Compensation Bureau reinstated the use of vocational rehabilitation experts.
The only change made to supposedly protect the injured worker from the misuse of
these experts was to make the individual counselor certified for the job instead
of the company they work for. The Director of the Bureau of Worker's
Compensation has failed to fulfill the mandate of the Senate hearing of 1998.
What the director did was not protection for the injured workers it was again
reinstating a tool that is used to deny an injured worker a fair chance to
collect workers compensation for a worker related injury.
Once again we are back
to the subject of the workers compensation system in Pennsylvania allowing fraud
to be perpetrated on an injured worker with the help of the Pennsylvania
Worker's Compensation Bureau. This is unethical!
Where
is the protection for Injured Workers?
Section 314. (a) At any time after an injury the employee, if so requested by
his employer, must submit himself at some reasonable time and place for a
physical examination or expert interview by an appropriate health care provider
or other expert, who
shall be selected and paid for by the employer.
|
