Question

Why were workers’ compensation laws established by the individual states? (List four.)

Answer 1

Workers compensation law was established to protect people who got injured or disabled while working at their jobs. The act was established to provide injured workers with fixed monetary benefits along with this it also provide benefits for dependents of those workers who got killed with the work related accidents of illnesses.

Every state has their own worker’s compensation law and employers who have multistate operations needs to look at the individual state statutes to determine the law applicable to that state. This is important because different states provide a diverse amount of benefits in workers compensation matters.

Workers compensation law was established by the individual states because of the following reasons:

1) In 1956, Social Security’s Disability insurance program was enacted. It was designed to implement workers compensation at the federal level. However, due to the political fear that the opposition would make it difficult to pass the bill it was left out of the legislation

2) In December 1970, Congress enacted Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), and started an investigation into state workers’ compensation laws. The commission found that there were serious flaws to most of the states’ worker’s compensation laws. However, commission rejected federal takeover by stating it would substantially disrupt the already established arrangements.

3) In most jurisdictions, worker’s compensation obligation is met by purchasing an insurance policy from the insurance company. The rates and premiums for different insurance policies varied in different states. Therefore, the compensation benefits vary according to the different states. In addition, the insurance policies are designed according to the economic condition and working condition of each state.

4) The entire burden of workers compensation lies on individual employers rather than the federal government. Therefore, according to the state laws each state has their individual laws.