Editorial:
‘Killing Me Softly’
BY Deb Richards · March 19, 2008

Editor’s Note: Due to the large number of requests for this editorial to run again, here it is. Keep the faith.

“A citizen is better off getting hit by a bus, than being hurt on the job in Washington State.” –Anonymous

After being exposed for more than two years, in day-to-day, painful detail, to the Washington State Labor and Industries (L & I) system (which is described on paper, and in theory, to assist workers who are injured on the job), I have developed a greater appreciation for the phrase, “Killing Me Softly.”
If a more grossly un-American, acutely self-serving Washington State department exists, I would like to learn about it so I can compare it the atrocity which exists now, and calls itself Washington State Labor and Industry. This is a department that by statute, is given money earned by Washington State workers, on the principle there will be something to help workers who lose their health on the job, and their subsequent ability to earn a living, when they need it.
The Washington State L&I “Killing Me Softly” principle begins early in the career when workers are required by law to contribute a formulaic sum each payday to L&I. These mandatory funds accumulate for some day, and if. It continues when a worker is injured on the job. When the injury occurs, basic rights, assistance and access to those accumulated funds end.
By statute and formula, Washington State Labor and Industry is allowed to decide without medical validation, whether or not injured workers are truly injured. Entry-level employees without a certified medical background are allowed to screen the injured worker’s claims. Claims are often closed for reasons the department does not have to justify.
If the injured workers, (who is reduced to an abbreviation called IW), protests the closure, L&I pours it on. L&I inundates, attempts to intimidate and overwhelm the workers with what they call, “rules, paperwork, rights and responsibilities.”
Mind you, the injured workers have to negotiate all the State paperwork written in a medical terminology language, most don’t understand, without the benefit of any basic assistance, advocacy or representation.
Injured workers are never invited in, in person, to discuss their injuries; instead they immediately become dehumanized and faceless, assigned a case number. The entry-level gatekeeper’s job is to watchdog the injured worker’s paperwork for any missteps. If the injured worker fails to produce the right terminology, in any of the response paperwork, the price is very high.
L&I is allowed complete unaccountable access to the bottomless pit of taxpayer and worker funds to make the injured workers dance anyway they choose. Injured workers can be sent repetitively to their doctors to get a single piece of paper signed that says they are still off work; L&I is allowed to doctor-shop and send injured workers to repetitive medical exams until L&I gets the medical assessment they want.
These exams are called Independent Medical Exams or IMEs. They are not called objective medical exams because the State is allowed to choose “independent” medical provider to examine the injured worker. Mind you, these are hand-picked medical providers employed by the State as independent contractors, and yet the exams are called “independent?
While the scheduling of these visits and exams goes on, the injured worker can be denied basic medical assessment, treatment, and care. There is nothing in the statutes that says workers have to be given basic medical assessment tests, appropriate treatment or care.
Each injured worker has a medical fund. There are no RCWs to mandate how much of the fund is required to be spent on the injured worker’s care. L&I is completely at liberty to use it anyway they see fit. It all can be spent on consultants; and it often is.
And if an injured worker is financially compensated for a permanent injury, it is laughable. If a Washington State worker’s back is permanently injured on the job, he/she will receive $6,000. Imagine if you were hit by a bus and had your back broken, and lost your ability to work or even bend over to tie your shoes or carry a gallon of milk?
L&I holds all the cards and is allowed to operate in a culture which assumes every injured worker is a crook; taking everything from the system. In an age filled with acute technology and ultra-defining tests, faked injuries are easier now to determine, than 20 or 30 years ago.
But the old suspect culture of disrespectful disdain remains. It colorizes the transactions between L&I and the injured workers from day one, continuing through the ordeal of regaining health and returning to work or stabilized enough to go through retraining.
It is very typical for an injured worker who has spent their working life contributing to this fund to not only lose their health and ability to earn a living, but to lose their homes, transportation, health insurance, marriages, credit rating and families—and self-respect.
There is no one in the State system who cares about the injured worker, once the on-the-job accident happens. Pain and suffering comes not just from the on-the-job injury, but the endless months of emotional blasts and aftershocks of trying to make headway in the paperwork game called Killing Me Softly, by Washington State L&I.
If you are hurt on the job in Washington State, good luck to you. Workers are not allowed to sue Washington State employers for the creation and continuation of unsafe work conditions. L&I serves as the sole restorative financial hub for the injured worker; but to L&I, workers means nothing at all.
It is incumbent on elected officials who truly consider their jobs ensuring fair and equitable representation of its workers, taxpayers and citizens, to make substantive, ethical and cultural changes so when workers in Washington are hurt on the job, they are assured basic rights, assistance with and access to those funds designed to help them get well and return a productive life.