Court Opinion

ID: 9731411
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:44:43.930817+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:17.757049
License: Public Domain

FLAHERTY, Justice,
dissenting.
This is an. appeal, by allowance, from an order of the Commonwealth Court which affirmed an order of the Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board (Board) modifying a decision of a referee in a compensation case where an employer sought to reduce the disability payments being made to an injured employee. The employer, St. Joe Paper Company (St. Joe), appellant herein, had been making payments for total disability to its employee, Andrew Staroschuck (claimant), as a result of a work-related incident in which claimant suffered a lower back strain.
Claimant began receiving disability payments in 1983. In 1986, St. Joe offered claimant a job as a shipping clerk, a newly created position that was designed to accommodate claimant’s physical limitations. This was a salaried non-union position. Claimant refused the position on the basis that he did not wish to work in a non-union capacity. Having been a union member for thirty-six years, claimant had attained a high level of seniority. He ranked eleventh or twelfth on the plant seniority list. This seniority, and associated benefits, would have been forfeited if employment in a non-union capacity had been undertaken for longer than six months. Accordingly, St. Joe offered to allow claimant to try the new position for a period of six months, and, if he became dissatisfied, to return to the union. Claimant refused.
Subsequently, St. Joe filed'a petition for modification of benefits, alleging that the job as a shipping clerk was within claimant’s physical capabilities and that claimant’s refusal to accept the job was improper. A hearing was held before a referee. The referee made findings that claimant was physi*357cally able to perform the proffered job and that claimant’s refusal to accept the job was unreasonable. With regard to the unreasonableness of claimant’s refusal, the referee noted that “claimant had up to six months to try the job, and that if it didn’t work out, he could return to the hourly union workers with no effect on his union seniority, as well as the fact that the claimant would have received the same vacation benefits that he previously had, a credit for past retirement benefits earned, as well as the salaried life and health benefits.” Accordingly, the referee granted the petition for modification of benefits and ordered St. Joe to reduce its payments to a level reflecting partial disability, so as to take into account the difference between wages claimant formerly earned and wages he would have earned as a shipping clerk.
An appeal was taken to the Board. The Board modified the referee’s decision and ordered that partial disability payments be made for a period of just six months, with the proviso that, at the end of the six-month period, total disability payments would resume. The Board’s rationale was that the job as a shipping clerk should be deemed available to claimant for only six months because claimant would have lost his union seniority if he occupied the job for a longer period. The loss of seniority was viewed as an unacceptable consequence of accepting the non-union job, since there would have been a forfeiture of certain benefits associated with union seniority status. These benefits included job security, time and a half pay for overtime, bidding rights for higher paying jobs, etc. The fact that claimant would, as a non-union employee, have continued to receive various other benefits was not given weight by the Board.
An appeal was taken to the Commonwealth Court, and the Board’s decision was affirmed. I would reverse.
In Kachinski v. Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board, 516 Pa. 240, 532 A.2d 374 (1987), this Court set forth criteria governing the modification of disability benefits in cases where there has been an alleged failure by an employee to accept suitable work. We held that an “employer must ... produce evidence of a referral (or referrals) to a then open job (or *358jobs), which fits in the occupational category for which the claimant has been given medical clearance, e.g., light work, sedentary work, etc.” 516 Pa. at 252, 532 A.2d at 380. It is also required that the “referrals by the employer must be tailored to the claimant’s abilities____” Id. Accord Farkaly v. Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board, 516 Pa. 256, 258-59, 532 A.2d 382, 383 (1987) (employer must prove that disabled claimant was referred to an employment position within his capabilities, i.e., a job within the category for which medical clearance was given).
Our decisions in Kachinski and Farkaly require that the job offered to a claimant be within the claimant’s abilities, but there is no requirement set forth in those decisions that jobs offered to union members be union ones. Nor is there a basis for imposing such a requirement. The question of whether a job is within a claimant’s abilities has no connection whatsoever with whether the job is a union one. Certainly, a union job may have certain benefits associated with it. Likewise, a nonunion job may have its own set of benefits. The mere fact that the benefits are not identical, however, does not have bearing upon whether a given job is within a claimant’s abilities.
Clearly, an employer has a justifiable interest in seeing that payments for total disability do not continue for claimants who are not in fact totally disabled. It was not the intent of the Workmen’s Compensation Act, 77 P.S. § 1 et seq., to hold employers responsible in excess of the injuries actually caused. See Kachinski, 516 Pa. at 251, 532 A.2d at 379. To hold an employer responsible for paying compensation to a claimant who is capable of performing a job that has been proffered, where the claimant has refused to accept the job because of its non-union status, would expand the employer’s liability in a manner not contemplated by the legislature.
The Workmen’s Compensation Act contains no provision according a preferred status to union employment. If it were to become the policy in this Commonwealth that union members who are receiving disability payments must be offered *359only union jobs, such a policy should emanate from the legislature rather than from the courts.
In the present case the referee made a finding, based upon an ample evidentiary record, that claimant was capable of performing a job as a shipping clerk. Accordingly, the referee ordered that claimant’s disability benefits be reduced. The Board and the Commonwealth Court erred, however, in modifying the referee’s decision to allow claimant’s status as a union member to affect the period during which a reduced level of disability benefits were to be paid. The decision of the referee should, therefore, be reinstated.