Half-a-dozen public hearings are planned next month to discuss a Department of Labor & Industries proposal to lift rates next year for workers’ compensation premiums. The potential hike is an average of 2.7 percent, and it would be the department’s first rate increase in three years.
The October public hearings are planned in Tukwila (Tuesday, Oct. 22); Bellingham (Wednesday, Oct. 23); Spokane Valley (Thursday, Oct. 24); Richland (Friday, Oct. 25); Tumwater (Monday, Oct. 28), and Vancouver (Tuesday, Oct. 29). Final rates will be adopted in early December and go into effect Jan. 1, 2014.”
Check out this very informative department video (which will take up less than six and a half minutes of your time) called “Rate Setting 101.”
OK, perhaps you’re asking yourself, “How have these L&I premium rates changed in the past 20-plus years?” Here’s a chart from the department that “shows a comparison of wage inflation (green line) and L&I rate changes (red line)” since 1991.
One of the top “bottom lines” in all of this, of course, is worker and workplace safety. A lumber company in the Klickitat County town of Bingen is the most-recent, very unfortunate object of L&I attention. A machinery accident this past March left one of the company’s workers with severe injuries and led to an investigation. Here’s the press release on the incident: Klickitat County lumber company fined nearly a quarter of a million dollars after worker gets caught in machinery.