It concluded that benefits replace only 40 percent of the ''profound'' wage loss that permanently disabled workers experience, both from being out of work for a time and from earning ''substantially'' lower wages when they return to work. Even after 10 years, the injured worker does not catch up with uninjured colleagues, the institute said. Especially hard hit, the institute study said, are workers with permanent disabilities under 25 percent. Researchers said they did not know why workers with minor injuries suffer large wage loss, but the same phenomenon is seen among people who have been laid off. The program ''provides workers with relatively little compensation but a lot of 'system,''' the report said.
Most minor claims take three or more years to resolve.
A year before the Rand report was released, labor analysts at the University of California, Berkeley, published a study on whether permanently injured workers were getting the information and assistance they needed during their workers compensation claim. People treated them as if they had injured themselves on purpose or were otherwise filing a fraudulent claim. Employers gave them little or no information to help them. They felt they had been unfairly blamed and ostracized at a time when they needed understanding and compassion. They were afraid they might be fired for filing a claim.