Jimmy Smith points to an angry scar running the length of his stomach. "I got some stuff dropped on me," is all he offers as explanation. Smith, a cast member on the History Channel reality show Ax Men, is giving a tour of his mangled body in an online video called "Jimmy's Scars." He goes on: "It tore my diaphragm loose...They had to cut me open."
Then he points at his ankle, where he has another scar, jagged and outlined in red. He recalls how, after a fall, he had reached down to grab what felt like a stick in his boot. Instead, he realized, "I grabbed my bone." The adventures of Smith and his South Cle Elum company, S&S Aqua Logging, are documented on Ax Men's third season, which premiered last week. Two Washington logging crews are featured on the show. Smith's company scavenges local rivers for valuable timber that fell off log barges decades ago. There's also Rygaard Logging, a father/son operation that cuts down trees on the Olympic Peninsula.
Courtesy of the History Channel
Ax Men's Jimmy Smith (in front): on the hunt for sunken logs, and under investigation for
possible workers’-comp fraud.
Courtesy of the History Channel
Gabe Rygaard: skeptical of claims.
Whether pulling trees from above ground or underwater, the work is dangerous. The men are operating extremely heavy equipment (with giant tree cuttings dangling by ropes overhead) on rocky terrain. In the closing moments of the third season's premiere episode, a log pierces the protective cage in which a machine operator had been sitting. That's followed by the sound of a beeping hospital monitor.
So it's no wonder that the cost of treating workers injured on the job is a pretty pressing concern for people in the logging business.
Gabe Rygaard, the son, says his premiums to the state's workers' compensation fund are by far his biggest expense. And getting bigger: Rates for loggers jumped 19 percent this month. Rygaard says he'll be forced to cut other benefits to his employees, like regular health insurance. If rates get much higher, he says, he won't be able to stay in business in this state at all.
Employers like Rygaard complain that Washington's workers'-comp system is generous to the point of crippling employers. They believe rates are being raised to support ever-expanding benefits that are too easily obtained, and a bloated bureaucracy at the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries, the agency that oversees workers' comp. And not only small-time operators are upset. Boeing cited the state's workers'-comp system as one of the reasons it chose South Carolina for a second assembly line for its new Dreamliner. The Association of Washington Business argues that L&I too readily awards lifetime benefits to workers whose claims are specious at best and downright fraudulent at worst.
The state's most outspoken and aggressive business lobby, the Building Industry Association of Washington, which represents home builders, has been grousing about L&I for years. The BIAW is quick to point out that employees who miss work due to injury stay on the state's dime far longer than their counterparts in other states. And while businesses around Washington are laying off employees and making cuts, the 2,700-employee L&I is seeing its administrative costs rise.
Given the bad economic climate and the shocking loss of Boeing's assembly plant, these longtime complaints are getting a new hearing, as even liberal politicians worry about the state's "business climate." Two bills have already been introduced in the current legislative session to try to reform the workers'-comp system.
But politically powerful labor unions aren't likely to let much happen. They treasure Washington's system, which offers the third-most-generous benefits package among all states, according to the National Academy for Social Insurance, a D.C.–based think tank that evaluates government programs like Social Security and workers' comp.
In Washington, an injured employee can start collecting a paycheck from the state after just three missed workdays, rather than the seven required in most states. While most states only replace two-thirds of your salary while you're off work, Washington pays as much as 75 percent. And for people who are declared unable to work for life, the annual amount they receive to cover lost wages is adjusted for inflation, something most states don't do.
The great thing about Washington, says Tacoma attorney Terri Herring-Puz, who represents employees in workers'-comp disputes, is that the system is run entirely by the government, with no private companies participating. We're one of only four states in the country where that's the case. As she sees it, the state has no incentive to avoid paying claims in order to satisfy shareholders. "We have a nonprofit system," Herring-Puz says. "It's not an insurance carrier who needs to make money above what they pay out in benefits."
But to the BIAW, the lack of competition "has led to an inefficient, bloated bureaucracy that squanders employers' tax dollars and gives injured workers the run-around," as the organization said on its blog "The Hammer" last fall.
Attorney General Rob McKenna, Secretary of State Sam Reed, and the Republican party leaders in the state legislature recently authored an op-ed in The Seattle Times calling for, among other things, allowing private competition in the state's "job-killing workers'-compensation system." House Republicans introduced such a bill last week.
