In return, businesses receive not only insurance against these claims, but more importantly, immunity from lawsuits for damages resulting from workplace injury and illness. Every year in the Legislature, there is pressure from all the parties involved in the workers compensation system. Business interests seek to lower their premiums or find ways to reduce or control benefit levels.
Labor wants to keep the fund stable and maintain or increase the benefits for injured workers.
Additionally, there is pressure from the private insurance industry, which sees a huge new potential market in industrial insurance. Here are the facts. Washington, with its many problems, is viewed as a model of efficiency for the entire country. Unfortunately, in many cases, injured workers suffer an injury or illness that makes it impossible to return to their job of injury. Their benefits have been terminated and they have been left, in many cases, either unemployed or working at jobs with substantially less income than their wage at the time they were injured.