WCDefenseCA

Happy Wednesday, dear readers!

I know how much you like the humble blogger’s pop quizzes, and you know how much your humble blogger loves to make his readers happy, so what else could we start today’s blog post with other than a pop quiz?

What’s significant about July 1, 2023?  If you said it is the first day of the second half of the year, you are correct.  If you say it is day two of a five-day weekend ending on Independence Day, then I envy your working conditions.  If you say it’s time to check our TTD rates, then you have won yourself the nodding approval of the humble blogger.

That’s right! Come July 1, 2023, minimum wage increases in various counties and cities in California!  Sheppard Mullin has a really good breakdown on which counties and cities are affected and by how much.

So, what should you be doing in anticipation of July 1, 2023?  Well, for starters, check if the county or city where your injured worker worked has a minimum wage increase going into effect on 7/1/23.  If it does, check if your injured worker receiving TD was earning above the new minimum wage.  Finally, if your injured worker was earning less than the new minimum wage prior to the date of injury, you may want to recalculate the TTD rate using the new minimum wage.  One easy way to do that is to divide the new minimum wage by the hourly rate the applicant was earning prior to the DOI, then multiply the resulting number by the TTD rate.

So, if applicant was previously earning $15.75 per hour in Alameda, and would now be entitled to $16.52 per hour, $16.52 (new minimum wage) / $15.75 (old minimum wage) = 1.05.  You would then multiply the previous TTD rate by 1.05 to get the new TTD rate reflecting the increased minimum wage. 

As if you didn’t have enough to do or worry about…

Straight on till Friday, dear readers!