Main Street Menace of the Week: California Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board
While the legislature is in session, the National Federation of Independent Business/California will be profiling anti-small business bills and policy, and the adverse effect they would have on California’s job creators. This is the fifth column of that series.
Sadly, small businesses aren’t all that surprised these days when the California Legislature tries to erect yet another roadblock that will further block economic or job growth on Main Street in our state. But what small employers did not know or anticipate is that a little-known, quasi-judicial state board would give our elected leaders a run for their money by taking the greatest legislative achievement in the past half-decade – workers’ compensation reform – and completely rewriting legislation that has significantly benefited California employees and employers.
Recently, the NFIB Small Business Legal Center took on this grievous overreach by the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board (WCAB) and filed amicus briefs in the reconsideration of two pivotal cases (Almaraz v. Enviroserve and Ogilvie v. San Francisco) that affect California workers’ compensation system. The cases challenge workers’ compensation reforms that brought objectivity to the evaluation of permanent disabilities and disability benefits.
Emily Litella Had it Right
I’m sitting here sipping my third – well, maybe my fifth – cup of coffee and feeling guilty for the damage I’m inflicting on my health this morning. As I do every morning.
But wait. Here’s this article in the Los Angeles Times that says the latest study shows – surprise! – coffee is not harmful. In fact, it is beneficial to health. “It is a good beverage choice,” a Harvard researcher says right here.
Hey! Remember all those supposed experts who gravely warned us that coffee drinking will cause heart disease? All those scholarly studies from august institutions that concluded that coffee will cause cancer and hypertension and maybe global warming, too?
Well, in the words of the late, great Emily Litella from Saturday Night Live: Never mind.
L. A. City Employee Unions Must Share Sacrifice
As all of us in the private sector know, there are no protected classes in this economic downturn. In L.A. County, we have lost 250,000 private sector jobs during the past year and our unemployment now totals 565,000. Every business and the families of their employees have felt the financial burden of this recession.
In contrast, there are more public sector jobs in L.A. County than one year ago, but the economic downturn is now staring them in the face as well. The loss of business in Los Angeles has resulted in decreased tax revenue for the City of Los Angeles and elected officials are now struggling with unavoidable budget cuts.
Mayor Villaraigosa and the L.A. City Council are finalizing a city budget that reflects this new municipal reality. However, the last holdouts appear to be the city employee unions who have yet to step up and join the rest of us in this time of "shared sacrifice."
Governor Cameron?
Let me be the first one here to issue the call to the current leader of Britain’s shadow government, David Cameron, that if his current quest for prime minister fails, we have a nice little state for him to run. I can see the bumper stickers already: “Cameron for Governor: A funny accent, but we’re used to that”. The reason I am proffering the British MP to lead the Golden State, though, is less about how he speaks than what he has been saying.
In an interesting essay he wrote recently in the Guardian newspaper, entitled “A New Politics: We need a massive, radical redistribution of power”, Cameron demonstrates a grasp of two of the major policy challenges facing this state: devolving decision-making power to regions and cities, and calling on civil society to play a stronger role in governance. Of course, Cameron is responding to the current expense scandal that is racking parliamentarians from all parties, but it is not a recent epiphany – he has been pushing his “New Federalism” (to borrow a slogan from a past California governor) for years.