White Construction Workers in Illinois Get Higher Workers’ Comp Settlements: Study
[Writer] This is research news from U-I-C – the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Today, Lee Friedman, assistant professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at the UIC School of Public Health, talks about his study examining ethnic disparities in workers’ compensation claims in Illinois.
Here’s professor Friedman:
[Friedman] In the recent study we found that white non-Hispanic workers that filed workers compensation claims with the Illinois Workers Comp Commission received approximately $6,000 more than other minority workers working in the same industry –that is the construction industry –and filing claims through the same commission.
Now the $6,000, it was higher despite controlling for a lot of different aspects that are known to contribute to the final claims settlement, or decision, that is made by the arbitrator or the courts such as average weekly wage, which is really one of the most important factors because that’s the base number that is used for calculating lost wages and compensation.
When we looked at average weekly wage across the three major ethnic groups — that is black, Hispanic and white non-Hispanic — the average weekly wage was almost identical with some minor variation. It’s not as dramatically different as we see across the entire population we’re looking at general economic numbers.
So, for example, for blacks the average weekly wage was $880, for Hispanics it was $815, and for white non-Hispanics is was $910. It didn’t have as dramatic of a disparity. And this is really the underlying component that would drive a lot of the compensation costs.
In our final models as well we controlled for very important factors such as the amount of weeks they lost, permanent partial disability which is the amount of disability that someone is effectively determined for an injury – so if you lose a finger, or you have a severe fracture, or some other aspect that might be caused by an injury — you get a percent partial disability and we controlled for that as well. And, of course, use of an attorney. Did the worker hire an attorney or not? Basically, did they represent themselves, as well as many other important factors that are known to contribute to the final decision that determines the amount of monetary compensation.
Why is this important? One of the main things that have to be thought about with this research is that it’s really not clear why this is happening.
Obviously one explanation is that it could be that there is some systemic bias or prejudices occurring within the system.
Or it could be – and very, very likely – is that the level of information and knowledge about how the system works and what can actually be litigated, disputed, or requested for compensation in how the process works might vary by ethnic group.
And it could also be that white non-Hispanic workers potentially take more time off and therefore, because the underlying basis, again this focus on average weekly wage, if they take more time off they’re going to get compensated for more lost wages and therefore that will drive up the final settlement and/or decision for the compensation.
And when looking at the data it did appear that that explains, to some degree, the potential difference between the ethnic groups but definitely not all of it.
So this has a lot of policy implications with the new law, or revised law, for workers compensation in Illinois that passed last year.
There was a lot of housecleaning that occurred within the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission. A lot of the arbitrators requested to be retired and they’ve hired a whole new staff –both legal staff, arbitrators – a complete overhaul of the commission as part of the response to the law but it might also have a very important effect on the potential disparities that are occurring between workers based on ethnicity.
As well as, hopefully, education of workers on what their benefits are and their rights for litigation as well as final compensation settlements.
[Writer] Lee Friedman is an assistant professor in environmental and occupational health sciences at the UIC School of Public Health.
For more information about this research, go to www-dot-news-dot- uic-dot-edu (www.today.uic.edu) … click on “news releases.” … and look for the release dated October 11, 2012.
This has been research news from U-I-C – the University of Illinois at Chicago.
