Opinion ID: 1696996
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: General policy issues

Text: The majority's decision to deny workers' compensation protection to workfare workers has the potential to create a two-tiered labor force or workfare caste which undermines the intent of fair labor standards laws by promoting the displacement of regular public workers with workfare workers who are not covered by workers' compensation. See Reese, supra at 901; Mahmoudov, supra at 365. Although the PRWORA and MFIP contain nondisplacement clauses, if workfare workers are denied workers' compensation coverage, public agencies may view this denial of benefits as an incentive to reduce their regular workforce through retirement and/or attrition and then fill their ranks with lower-cost workfare workers. Reese, supra at 908-09. There is evidence that regular employees have been displaced by workfare. Mahmoudov, supra at 362 n. 67. [14] Employment protections are necessary not only to prevent the exploitation of workfare participants, but also to thwart the displacement of regular public workers with lower paid workfare workers. Reese, supra at 907. Denying workers' compensation can unfairly burden dependents of deceased workfare workers by treating those who are less fortunate, simply because they are less fortunate, differently from others similarly situated. State ex rel. Patterson v. Indus. Comm., 77 Ohio St.3d 201, 672 N.E.2d 1008, 1012 (1996); see Mahmoudov, supra at 383. In Patterson the widow of a work-relief worker who died from histoplasmosis as a result of workplace exposure to pigeon droppings sued the Industrial Commission of Ohio, challenging the validity of a system that awarded significantly less benefits to dependents of work-relief workers than were awarded to nonwork-relief workers. Id. at 1009. The Ohio court found no rational basis for such blatant disparate treatment. Id. at 1012. Denying workers' compensation also may have a disproportionate impact on single mothers. The vast majority of AFDC [now TANF] recipients are single mothers with the sole responsibility for their children's upbringing. Benjamin L. Weiss, Single Mothers' Equal Right to Parent: A Fourteenth Amendment Defense Against Forced Labor Welfare Reform, 15 Law & Ineq. 215, 219 (1997). Because PRWORA's work participation rate requirements do not apply to adults without minor children, it is anticipated that [o]ver time, mothers will come to dominate the workfare program. Diller, supra at 30 n. 158. The denial of workers' compensation for workfare-related injuries could therefore disproportionately burden single mothers. [15] Finally, the denial of workers' compensation to workfare workers perpetuates stigmatization of public assistance recipients as societal failures. Under PRWORA and MFIP, public assistance recipients are required to fulfill the obligations of employees, but under the result reached by the majority, they do so without the same legal protections, rights, and privileges that other employees enjoy. They continue to be subject to a larger system designed to communicate the message that recipients are social failures rather than productive members of society. Diller, supra at 29. Unfortunately, the majority's denial of workers' compensation protection now becomes a part of this stigmatization.