Lawmakers Meet To Discuss Workers' Compensation Changes

ALBANY — Top labor, business and legislative leaders, and the Spitzer administration are in closed-door discussions to drastically reduce the cost of workers' compensation for employers while increasing checks to injured workers, officials confirmed yesterday.

The goal is a major improvement in New York's business climate and a major step toward fulfilling Mr. Spitzer's priority of reviving the upstate economy.

"There have been productive discussions on worker's compensation," a spokeswoman for Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver, Eileen Larrabee, said.

She said yesterday that the recent discord between Messrs. Silver and Spitzer hasn't derailed the talks, which could be the next major policy agreement this year. Mr. Spitzer has rebuked the Legislature since lawmakers chose one of their own last week to be the state comptroller, while ignoring the recommendations of an expert panel.

In Westchester County yesterday, Mr. Spitzer promised to continue criticizing lawmakers whom he believes stand in the way of reform.

Still, the AFL-CIO, the state Business Council, Senate and Assembly leaders, and Mr. Spitzer see a worker's compensation bill as the next big reform.

"Worker's compensation is the ultimate win-win because business will save money and can create jobs and injured workers get increases in their benefits," a spokesman for the New York Workers' Compensation Action Committee, Steven Greenberg, said.

The association's Web site said the maximum weekly benefit now is $400, unchanged in more than a decade.

The goals of the talks include cutting the cost of workers compensation insurance paid by employers for workers injured on the job by 15%, while increasing the benefit to injured workers by about $100 a week. The target to accomplish that goal is the state's unusual provision for payments to compensate workers for a permanent partial disability. The benefit can pay a worker for a persistent injury for decades even if the worker is able to continue working.