Workers, lawyers say comp system not as bad as advertised
NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee’s workers’ compensation system is not as burdensome to employers as some claim, a representative for the state’s trial lawyers association told a legislative committee Tuesday.
Gov. Phil Bredesen said in a speech Jan. 15 he was convinced Tennessee had a problem with high costs of workers’ compensation that was driving business and industry out of the state. He charged the Legislature with sending him improvements by the end of the current session.
The Senate Commerce Committee heard Tuesday from representatives of labor and the bar, who take a friendlier view of Tennessee’s court-based resolution system.
“We’re in a manufacturing crisis across this country for reasons that are probably far beyond the reach of this General Assembly,” said John Summers, chief lobbyist of the Tennessee Trials Lawyers’ Association. “Our competition isn’t Alabama or South Carolina, it’s a lot farther away,” meaning Mexico or China or other overseas countries.
Summers urged the Legislature to be cautious in approaching the problem. He cited a statistic provided to another legislative committee on Monday showing there are nearly 15,000 workers’ compensation cases in Tennessee courts every year, surpassed only by divorce and child custody cases.
“That is factually correct,” Summers said. “But what wasn’t said was the vast majority of those cases are settlements. There is only one lawyer involved.”
The director of the state Workers’ Compensation Advisory Council said less than 3 percent of workers’ compensation cases are fully litigated.
The percentage is significant because Tennessee’s system of using the courts to resolve differences in the cases is frequently cited as the primary reason costs are higher than in neighboring states.
Ron Vining, president of the United Steelworkers Union at a Bridgestone-Firestone plant in Morrison, also pointed out that numbers can be deceiving.
He noted the committee was told the cost per man hour of workers’ compensation at the Morrison plant was $1.40 per hour, as opposed to 11 cents per hour at another Bridgestone plant in Aiken, S.C.
“If we took that at face value everybody would pick up and move to South Carolina,” he said. “There are huge differences.”
Vining noted Bridgestone-Firestone insures itself for workers’ comp claims, and reeled off a list of things — doctors for second opinions, therapists, even private detectives to follow disabled workers around to see if they’re really injured — and asked if those expenses are part of the company’s workers’ compensation costs.
“We’re cheaper than 28 other states. Companies are not dodging Tennessee to go to other states. They’re going offshore,” Vining said. “They’re not leaving to avoid the $1.40 an hour in workers’ comp. They’re going offshore to avoid the $21-an-hour salaries.”
Summers said the trial lawyers believe a court-based resolution system is “inherently more equitable” than an administrative review process, which 48 other states use.
“If you have an administrative review system it’ll be full-bore politics,” he said. “I do not think we have a crisis. We have a problem, yes. But I believe we can make changes to curtail costs without cutting benefits.”
Committee Chairman Jerry Cooper, D-Morrison, said there is no legislation before the committee and he’s not sure the whether Bredesen administration plans to introduce it or leave it completely up to the Legislature.
“We’re not going to do anything to hurt the working people of Tennessee,” he said.
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