WCDefenseCA

Well, dear readers, here we are yet again!

So you’ve decided to read this blog post, but your humble blogger just as to ask the question: where are you reading these most humble workers’ compensation words from?

Are you bristling in your cubicle at the office?  Are you lounging in your pajamas at home?  Or, are you grumbling as you endure your commute from the one to the other?

We were blindsided by COVID19, and we were likewise blindsided by the lockdowns.  But we’re not fully back to February 28, 2020 either.  A lot of the work-force remains remote, or partially remote.  Even in the comp system, our depositions are almost all over ZOOM, our MSCs, Priority Conferences, and Status Conferences are over the phone, and some of our trials are via LifeSize.

Some employers want their employees to come back to work in person full time.  Some are willing to let employees work remote.  Since employers are competing for labor, which side will win out?  Can employers offer enough to employees to lure them back into the office?

Your humble blogger brings to your attention this article from USA Today, citing research by Nicholas Bloom of Stanford that suggests employees would be willing to forfeit up to 8% of annual pay for full or partial remote work. 

So, if employers can outbid their competitors for the price of employee labor by offering remote work instead of free lunches, nice facilities, etc., we can draw at least one prediction from this: we will continue to see employees working from home.   Perhaps not even a majority, but a significant minority of employees will remain remote, partially or fully.

Now, you  might be saying to yourself, “I opened my e-mail inbox to read this nonsense?”  Well hold on there, before you cut yourself a generous slice of “let’s spend Monday hurting Greg’s feelings,” think about this – how prepared are you to investigate and litigate injuries allegedly sustained while working at home?

A lot of the methods we use to defend or mitigate conventional workers’ compensation claims are simply not available to us with WFM injuries.  Unless your employees are operating certain side businesses which are not exactly family friendly, we should not expect to have regular video recordings of their remote work sites, unlike the employer-premises work facility. 

There are typically no co-worker witnesses either. 

Litigating work-from-home injuries is an entirely different challenge and if employees are willing to give up almost a tenth of their salary for the opportunity to work from home, you can bet your bottom dollar employers are going to compromise with their employees to get that done.  In other words, work-from-home, though not universal, is here to stay, and so is the need to litigate those work-from-home injuries.

Your humble blogger is ready for this brave new world… are you?