Minnesota sees dramatic differences in acceptance of workers' comp claims under state's COVID-19

[TexasTowelie]

Minnesota sees dramatic differences in acceptance of workers’ comp claims under state’s COVID-19 ‘presumption’ law


If you think you were infected with COVID-19 in a Minnesota workplace, you were better off being a nurse than a meatpacker.

Because of an emergency law adopted at the beginning of the pandemic, certain workers had an easier path to winning claims under Minnesota’s workers’ compensation law than others. That law said that certain workers who became infected were presumed to have been exposed to the virus on the job. Everyone else had to prove that the exposure was at work versus in the community.

A recent report from the state Department of Labor and Industry shows how important that law turned out to be for those who qualified: health care workers, first responders, police officers and corrections staff. In her report to the Legislature’s Frontline Worker Pay Working Group, DLI Commissioner and working group member Roslyn Robertson said that 96 percent of infected workers covered by the presumption law had their claims accepted. Workers who had the burden of proving they were exposed to COVID-19 at their place of employment, however, saw their claims denied 72 percent of the time.

And one group of workers who faced high infection rates in the early months of the pandemic in 2020 — beef, pork and poultry processors — have not had a single claim for compensation due to COVID-19 accepted. That’s despite the fact that COVID-19 infections closed several large meat processing plants and led to fears of supply shortages across the U.S. The federal government quickly ordered the plants to reopen.

After inquiries from the state about the lack of claims among meat processing workers, some were made by processors on behalf of employees. But all were denied by the companies’ insurers or claims administrators. “Some employers have taken the position that at the time when the largest number of meatpacking workers were diagnosed and reported to the Department of Health, there was broad community spread of COVID,” Robertson said. “They took the position that an individual worker could have come in contact with COVID outside the workplace.”

Read more: https://www.minnpost.com/state-government/2021/08/minnesota-sees-dramatic-differences-in-acceptance-of-workers-comp-claims-under-states-covid-19-presumption-law/