After an internal review showed that some employees may be taking advantage of the St. Charles Parish school system’s workers’ compensation policy, the board took the first step towards making a change.
Currently, workers’ compensation law requires a one week waiting period prior to benefits becoming effective. By law, the school system does not have to compensate the employee for the first week unless the employee sustains an injury that keeps them out for six weeks or more.
However, the current practice of the school system has been to compensate the employee from the first day out, regardless of the length of time they are off work.
Last week, the school board introduced the first reading for a new workers’ compensation policy. The new policy will give no compensation for the first week after an injury, unless that injury is caused by an assault. If the injury does cause the employee to miss work for six weeks or longer, compensation for the first week shall be made after those first six weeks have passed.
Back in July, an internal review by School Risk Manager Angie Peraza found that some employees would use the money they received during the first seven days of an injury in order to get overtime.
“For example, if you are on workers’ comp and you are out for three days during the week, instead of working two days to make up some of your work, you work for three days and actually get paid for six, with one day of overtime,” she said.
Instead, Peraza said that most places require the employee to use days of their own personal time during the first week of the injury. The schools’ new workers’ compensation policy would allow an employee to use their sick leave for any time not paid by workers’ compensation.
John Ellinghausen, the attorney representing the school system on workers’ compensation issues, says that some employees would just take that first week off from work and get $400 a week with the current policy. If an employee makes $600 a week normally, the $400 they receive tax-free usually equals it out.
“They all have their own doctors and they are taking advantage of the system,” Ellinghausen said. “Word is getting out.”
Another concern is how the number of employees filing workers’ compensation claims seemed to jump in April and May last year. Peraza says that there might be three or four claims in January, but 20 in May.
School board member John “Jay” Robichaux was against a policy change at first because he felt that it might either cause employees to purposefully stay out for six weeks to receive compensation for that first week or punish teachers who come back early from an injury simply because they enjoy their jobs.
“In the end, I had to agree with the change because it’s the law,” Robichaux said.
Superintendent Rodney Lafon says that the new policy should decrease the jump in cases towards the end of the year, while also saving the school system money.
The board will have a second reading of the new policy at their next meeting. If the board members don’t have any objection to the policy at that time, the change will take place.
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