Frontline essential workers continue to perform their jobs in extremely dangerous environments and are being infected with coronavirus as a result. Therefore, I urge you to take immediate steps to reform the workers compensation rules to reflect the needs of workers infected with the coronavirus.
Our members have provided an unprecedented response to the need of the public, and it’s critical that our lawmakers don’t forget these workers’ own needs as well. More needs to be done to ensure the values we put on display are indeed embraced by our elected officials.
Our state’s workers compensation system requires that in order to be eligible, claimants must prove they were injured at their workplace. For a disease with the scope and far-reaching infection rate as coronavirus, requiring an essential employee to prove they contracted it at a specific workplace is nearly impossible.
For this reason, we need lawmakers to amend the law’s employee “burden of proof” requirement to ensure employers do the right thing by their employees who contract the coronavirus. We must act NOW to ensure theses employees are not stuck in legal and bureaucratic limbo in order to receive workers compensation benefits.
Please TAKE ACTION NOW by clicking here to send a prewritten message to your state legislators urging them to support soon-to-be-introduced legislation to reform the workers compensation system for coronavirus victims.
