Last week, 42-year-old Dolphus McClain sat outside the offices of the Illinois Industrial Commission in the State of Illinois Center, waiting for his case to go before an arbitrator.
He`s used to waiting. It`s been three years since he hurt his back reaching for a crate in a South Side warehouse. And it`s been nearly as long that he`s been waiting for help from the Industrial Commission to get worker`s compensation money from his former employer.
”I didn`t expect it to take this long,” said the Humboldt Park man, who lost his job shortly after he was injured. ”I had a little money saved up, and I tried to live off that. But then I started having to get rid of stuff.”
The commission, by its own admission, does a poor job of handling the 60,000 claims that are filed each year by workers who aren`t able to reach an agreement with employers about fair compensation for injuries. Many workers, despite a desperate need for money to pay medical bills, have to wait years for their cases to be resolved.
Last spring, a coalition of business and labor groups spent three months drafting a bill in the Illinois General Assembly to speed cases through the commission. But in the legislature`s final hours, the reform plan was sidetracked by lobbyists for the state`s trial lawyers, who represent workers before the commission.
Now, with a week to go in the legislature`s fall session, negotiations are underway to revive the bill or to draft a new one.
”If we don`t do it now, it won`t get done,” warns Robert Gibson, president of the statewide AFL-CIO and labor`s chief negotiator on the reform bill.
But Republican and Democratic legislators aren`t very hopeful that another agreement will be struck. A meeting called by House Majority Leader Jim McPike (D., Alton) two weeks ago failed to yield any resolution. Another has been scheduled for Tuesday.
The problem, according to legislative sources, is that the business-labor coalition that produced the reform plan last spring is starting to disintegrate. Indeed, some of the state`s largest unions, including the United Auto Workers, are now said to oppose the effort.
”I think Gibson agreed to some things that either he didn`t fully understand or that other elements were clearly opposed to,” one Democratic source said.
Complicating matters is the fact that next year is an election year when business and labor can be expected to take their usual positions on opposite sides of the political debate.
And then there`s the feeling of some that the reform effort ran out of steam when a seemingly firm agreement on the bill came to nothing in the final hours of the legislative session.
”I think people who have been involved in negotiations are going to be reluctant to say, `Let`s sit through all of this again and have somebody blindside us again,` ” says Gibson.
Jeffrey Miller, chief of staff for Gov. James Thompson, says the governor wants to see the reform bill passed. Thompson joined labor and business leaders in a Statehouse news conference two days before the end of the spring legislative session to announce the reform agreement. That agreement fell through, however, because House Speaker Michael Madigan (D., Chicago) never called the bill to a vote.
”The longer you put it off, the longer it takes to clean up the backlog and make sure injured workers receive what they`re entitled to promptly,”
Miller said. ”We`ve had a real problem with the Industrial Commission.”
When worker`s compensation began in the early years of this century, it was designed as a compromise to provide workers with a no-fault system of quickly receiving income and money to pay their medical bills. In exchange, workers would drop claims against their employers in court.
But in Illinois, where about a fourth of the workers who lose time on the job pursue a claim before the commission, the system has broken down, almost everyone familiar with the process agrees.
Many cases at the commission don`t come to a hearing before an arbitrator until two years after they`ve been filed. Some take even longer.
Cases can be expedited for emergencies, including workers` financial conditions. And either side in a dispute can ask the arbitrator to speed up the process if the other side appears to be stalling.
But the arbitrator stage is usually only half the battle. About 70 percent of arbitrators` decisions are appealed to the commission, which has a backlog of about 4,000 cases, according to Chairman Ray Rybacki.
Right now, the commission often must sift through new evidence in appealed cases. Last spring`s reform bill would have restricted appeals to issues of law and would have created a special panel of three new
commissioners to dispose of the backlog.
The commission`s inability to deal with its cases is further compounded by the agency`s outdated and overloaded computers, which can`t provide much information about the number and types of cases moving through the system. And the daily schedules that the computers print out for arbitrators are often littered with old, previously disposed-of cases, creating even more confusion and delays.
”We`ve got a very serious problem here. No one is going to deny that,”
said Rybacki.
He blames recent budget cuts by the legislature and Thompson for reducing the commission`s staff by 27 percent over the last three years. This year, the legislature increased the commission`s budget 38 percent, but some of the money was earmarked for the yet unapproved reforms.
In opposing the reform bill last spring, trial lawyers objected to provisions that would have allowed workers and employers to volunteer for binding arbitration of cases-without lawyers if the parties chose. Binding arbitration was suggested to move cases through the system faster.
The trial lawyers were able to block the reform bill by appealing to the beneficiaries of their political contributions, including Madigan.
Madigan has sided with the trial lawyers association in past legislative battles, and attorneys have contributed as much as 40 percent of the campaign funds raised by his major political committee.
James Dudley, executive director of the trial lawyers association, said his group will continue objecting to reforms that include binding arbitration. ”We were called snakes, cheats and liars, but I guess we`re used to that,” Dudley said. ”What the other side doesn`t tell you is that every company, every insurance carrier, is required by state law and commission rule to be represented before the industrial commission by a lawyer.”
But Arthur Gottschalk, president of the Illinois Manufacturers`
Assocition and business` chief negotiator on the reform bill, said the binding arbitration plan was designed to work without lawyers for workers or employers. ”The trial bar saw this as a means by which they were being denied their fee. They screamed bloody murder,” Gottschalk said.
