New York became the first state in the nation to set up a workers’ compensation system in the wake of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. The program covers medical bills and cash for recovery time for countless injured workers. But in recent years, the program’s benefits have quietly shrunk by over a third, according to a new investigation by Max Parrott for New York Focus, with support from the Fund. Parrott found that from 2014 to 2023, the dollar amount of benefits insurers pay to workers fell by $1.4 billion per year – a 37 percent drop – and payouts have decreased even in years in which injury rates have gone up. Labor attorneys argue that this is the result of a series of decisions made by the Workers’ Compensation Board, the state body that administers the system. Those policy changes were made under the board’s four previous executive directors – each of whom left office and immediately joined workers’ comp insurance companies that they’d just been in charge of overseeing.
Investigating Workers’ Compensation in New York, grantee finds a “long retreat”
