Opinion ID: 2175419
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Employee's Earning Capacity

Text: Having decided that employee's physical condition will not allow him to resume his regular work as a chemical operator, we must now turn to the question of whether he may continue to receive weekly compensation payments in the light of his post-injury earnings. This question is all-important because in this state workmen's compensation is not paid to a worker because of his physical disability but because he has, as a result of his injury, suffered an impairment of his earning capacity. Peloso, Inc. v. Peloso, 103 R.I. 294, 237 A.2d 320; United Wire & Supply Corp. v. Frenier, 87 R.I. 31, 137 A.2d 414. If there has not been a diminution of earning capacity, a worker may not receive workmen's compensation benefits even though he has sustained a permanent and lingering injury. Weber v. American Silk Spinning Co., 38 R.I. 309, 95 A. 603. As this court said in Peloso, supra:    whether or not compensation payments should continue to be paid an injured employee is determined by ascertaining the degree to which the employee's earning capacity has been restored. When it is shown that the employee has regained his earning capacity to at least that stage at which it was before he sustained his disability, the act demands that compensation payments be terminated. Where it is demonstrated that an employee's post-injury earnings are equal to or greater than the amount he earned prior to his injury, this court has held that under the law of this jurisdiction, it shall be conclusively presumed that the employee's earning capacity has been fully restored. This rule applies even though the employee has returned to a different type of work. Universal Winding Co. v. Parks, 88 R.I. 384, 148 A.2d 755. The employee recognizes the principles we have just enumerated but claims that they are not relevant to him because of his work schedule. He points out that at Geigy he worked on a revolving-shift basis. The employee concedes that, during the hours between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., he could not be in two places at the same time. He could not be in the furniture store at the same time he was due to report for work at Geigy. Nor could he appear simultaneously at those two locations during the period between the 4 p.m. to midnight shift when both establishments were opened for business. The employee claims, however, that if physically able, he could have worked the midnight shift and a portion of the 4 p.m. to midnight shift at Geigy. He therefore asserts that he does have a loss of earning capacity  total for those weeks he was scheduled for the midnight shift and partial for the weeks of the so-called swing shift. While we have serious doubts that employee, even if he was physically able, would have the stamina to work for any considerable period of time a 40-hour week as a chemical operator and an additional 51-hour week in the furniture store, we must fault employee's novel theory of his lost earning capacity for a more basic reason  and that is the purpose and philosophy behind our Workmen's Compensation Act. The primary object of workmen's compensation is to provide economic assistance to an employee who is injured and thereby suffers a loss of earnings. The Compensation Act was intended to impose upon the employer the burden of taking care of the casualties occurring in his employment, thus preventing the injured employee from becoming a public charge. Rosa v. George A. Fuller Co., 74 R.I. 215, 60 A.2d 150. Workmen's compensation payments were never intended to provide general health and accident insurance or to afford full compensation for injuries suffered from one's employment. DeLallo v. Queen Dyeing Co., 73 R.I. 325, 56 A.2d 174. The Workmen's Compensation Act is humane legislation designed to afford a modicum of economic shelter to one who has sustained an industrial injury. The weekly compensation benefit paid an employee was never intended as something being paid for nothing. The benefit received is a substitute for the weekly salary an employer would have paid his employee but for the injury. Masi v. A. Gasbarro & Sons, Inc., 103 R.I. 136, 235 A.2d 341. No matter what the rule may be in other jurisdictions, the sine qua non of earning capacity, so far as the Rhode Island Workmen's Compensation Act is concerned, is the amount of the post-injury earnings of a worker  if they are equal to or in excess of his pre-injury earnings, then the worker is no longer entitled to receive weekly monetary benefits. This is true even though he might have time to work a second job, the duties of which he is physically able to perform notwithstanding his original work-connected injury. Even though we must commend employee for his industriousness and diligence in securing work at the furniture store, he may not reap a financial bonanza under the Compensation Act because of his unique employment situation. Here Zuckerman's earnings in the furniture business show that he had in fact regained his earning capacity. There is, therefore, evidence in the record to support the full commission's finding that Zuckerman's incapacity for work had ceased by reason of his post-injury earnings.