State Sen. Karen Keiser, D-Kent, called two worker compensation bills “bad news” after the new Republican majority passed both bills Monday in Olympia on a 25-24 caucus-line vote.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThese bills are bad news for any middle-class worker in our state who gets seriously hurt on the job,\u201d Keiser said in a media release. \u201cAll these bills do is lower costs for businesses by taking benefits from those who need it most \u2014 the nurse whose back goes out lifting a patient, the delivery man who slips and shatters a hip, the logger who loses an arm or leg and his ability to take care of his family.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Senate Democrats also ripped the partisanship of the Republican majority that took control when Democrats Rodney Tom of Medina and Tim Sheldon of Potlach crossed lines to form the new majority.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThey can talk all they want about collaboration, but the math speaks louder,\u201d said Sen. Steve Conway, D-Tacoma. \u201cLast week these bills passed out of committee on straight caucus-line votes, and today (Monday) they moved off the Senate floor the same way. This isn\u2019t bipartisanship; this is just one side wielding its one-vote majority to pass partisan legislation that hurts the middle class.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Senate bills 5112 <\/a>and 5128<\/a> would make numerous changes to a state worker\u2019s compensation system that recently underwent reforms that are still in the process of taking full effect.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Among other things, the bills allow employers to influence what criteria is used to determine the extent of a worker\u2019s injury and fitness to return to work; and open to workers of all ages an option that was originally designed for older workers near retirement to settle claims rather than undergo costly retraining for new career fields.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cThese bills won\u2019t help injured employees get healthy and back to work; they don\u2019t create jobs at all,\u201d said Sen. Bob Hasegawa, D-Seattle. \u201cThis is just a plan to shift costs from businesses onto the backs of injured employees and their families. These aren\u2019t jobs bills. They\u2019re anti-jobs bills.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" State Sen. Karen Keiser, D-Kent, called two worker compensation bills “bad news” after the new Republican majority passed both bills Monday in Olympia on a 25-24 caucus-line vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":17768,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-20949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20949"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20949"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=20949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}