JUNE ACTION CAMPAIGN
Mass Email The Legislature of Florida
By June 15th, please:
1. Email all the representative and senators a short note. We have included two sample notes at the bottom.
Click here for a list of all the Florida legislators. Copy and paste the addresses into your email and send them. (You may also have the ability to put these addresses in your own email address book.)
Avoid copying them into the TO: section of your email message. The recipients will be able to tell who else you sent the email to, and this is just none of their business! Instead copy and paste them into your BCC (blind copy) address section. Try to avoid using the CC: section as well.
2. Send a copy of that note to Eric Koli from the New York Times at koli@nytimes.com.
3. Tell them that injured workers have waited long enough for legislative action that is specifically for injured workers.
4. Ask them to refer to last year's Senate Bill 2416. Ask them to support legislation that will further reform for injured workers.
5. Include a sentence such as "You may want to look at this website to get a better picture of the workers compensation world from the point of view of injured workers: www.voicesflorida.com."
6. Listed below are two messages you may use for ideas or even copy and paste it into your email message if that is what you need to do.
7. Be sure to sign your name (with title), your address including zip code and your phone number. Without the address, lawmakers tend to pay less attention to your message.
REMEMBER: Do NOT say that you are speaking for VOICES. Mentioning that you are a member - if you are - is fine, but please be very clear - you are not to speak FOR the organizationn.
This has caused serious and negative confusion with lawmakers in the past, so be careful out there, okay? If the lawmaker wishes to hear "the official line", refer him/her to Mary Bailey at crs012001@cs.com.
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Honorable Lawmakers,
Once again the session has come and gone and injured workers concerns have been ignored. Once again we got no relief from the legislature in making the workers compensation system of this state truly fair, equitable and self-executing.
What will it take for you to do the right thing? When will you be honest with yourself and objectively look at the comp system? When and if you do you will see that the system is so biased against injured workers that it has to be fixed immediately.
We filed a bill this session, (SB2416), and asked you to take it up. You did not. It would have brought tremendous relief to injured workers. This bill was balanced and fair. You can find this bill on our homepage of our webpage www.voicesflorida.com under Capitol Campaign 2005 or on the Senate webpage.
We ask you now to take a look at that bill. We ask for your help. We know the bill will be re-filed next session and given a new number so let's just call it the VOICES Workers Compensation Bill of 2005 filed by Senator Anthony Hill. We ask that you look over this bill and back it in future legislative sessions.
Injured workers have patiently waited for relief from the legislature for several years now. When will our concerns be addressed? When will you make it a fair playing field for injured workers trapped in the comp system?
We don't have money for lobbyists; we can't even make it to the Capitol to lobby. We are hurting and broke and it's because lawmakers continually hear from able-bodied, well-paid insurance and business lobbyists and they fail to see the workers comp situation from the place of the injured worker. It's not a pretty picture.
There are far more issues to be considered in workers comp than those of business and insurance. There are also the issues of the persons who are the intended targets, clients, consumers of all the legislation. But those issues are routinely ignored.
Please listen to our concerns and act today to make injured workers whole again. We can't wait any longer.
Sincerely,
(Put your title like Mr., Dr., etc.) Your Name Your Address including zip code Your phone number
Here's another one you can use.
Honorable Lawmaker:
I have been watching and learning quite a lot in the last (fill in the number of years) years since (fill in who was injured) was (disabled due to a workplace injury OR hurt at work).
What I learned was that the w/c system as practiced in Florida is absolutely unAmerican in general tone, if you think that "justice for all" is an American goal.
Last year, injured workers through Sen. Tony Hill introduced a bill (SB2416) that would for the first time ever create changes that would actually help injured workers in their efforts to get as whole as possible.
Unfortunately, it was not a carrier or business bill and so it was duly ignored, as has occurred every year that I've been tracking workers comp legislation.
It really is time - waaaay past time - for Florida lawmakers to take a look at the w/c system in Florida from HOW IT AFFECTS THE WORKERS, the end-consumers or clients that the system was designed form.
I urge you to take a look at last year's bill and get the gist of it. I urge you to back reform efforts next year FOR workers, in spite of the protestations --- oh, so loud and oh, so well-funded --- of the insurance and business industries.
Injured workers have two basic points to make that just aren't heard. Here they are.
Are you ready? Hearing aids turned up?? Okay.......
The first one: The basic laws protecting injured workers are so illegally implemented/non-implemented/delayed/denied that they are useful only to some injured workers and definitely useful to the carriers and other professional players who make money from the system.
Witness, please, how the w/c court system is backlogged, how people wait years (really!) for assistance, how the deputy chief judge and Gov. Bush have refused to fund extra judges to expedite the case backlogs.
Think about it this way - if the law, which is SUPPOSED to be self-executing, were in reality self-executing, workers wouldn't be filing so many petitions for benefit. If the carriers would actually do what the law required, most of those cases would just go away.
Imagine that happening. No backlog. Immediate medical treatment; timely fiscal assistance. All the complaints about claimant attorney fees would disappear because we wouldn't need attorneys. Are you imagining that?
But it won't happen. Not in Florida in our lifetimes - not without legal remedies.
Being legal costs carriers money. They are so well-funded that they can afford to ignore the law, unless and until challenged at w/c court, the JCC.
And then they can play the legal game forever if desired because they can afford to. What do they have to lose??? Not much in Florida.
Meanwhile, Mr. Jones doesn't get his medical treatment, Ms. Smith has to declare bankruptcy and ----ironically---- after years of illegal delays and denials, Mr. Jones might get treated, but he's medically destroyed; Ms. Jones might get a judgement for her financial assistance, but her credit rating is destroyed, her savings and retirement funds have been pillaged, her house and car are gone and her kids have been hungry and have no hope of college. Did I mention that the stress was so bad that her husband left and she attempted suicide?
That is why YOU need to get yourself educated about how the laws affect the injured workers - from THEIR point of view.
The workers second main point is this: There is a huge culture of deliberately ignoring information from injured workers.
Huge sections of the current w/c legislation were crafted by a very crafty insurance lobbyist (do you want her name?) and feature line after line where the law skews away from protecting and assisting the workers and instead directly skews toward protecting and assisting carrier profits.
Over and over injured workers have addressed insurance committees which give good old boys plenty of time to jack their jaws and then give injured workers 2 minutes to make their cases and be insulted to boot. Yes, it does happen.
We have been told by a chair of an insurance committee to stop sending email to her because it clogs up her inbox. Guess what industry paid her 6 figures a couple of years previously?
We have tried repeatedly to be part of state-wide commissions and panels that make decisions and recommendations about workers comp. WE CANNOT EVEN GET A SEAT AT THE TABLE. If it were an Indian Affairs committee with no Native peoples' representation or a commission dealing with minority affairs that had no African-American or Hispanic or Asian members, wouldn't that smack of paternalism and lack of representation? It would be unthinkable, wouldn't it?
What if there were opportunities for testimony as the minority commissioners hold hearing throughout the state and minority citizens were told they couldn't speak because they have already said enough. Would you be appalled?
It happens repeatedly to injured workers. YOU can help make it stop.
I urge you to take a look at SB2416 from last session and see what it would take to make a huge difference in the lives of Floridians.
Even you are only one injury away from being in our shoes. And the shoes pinch.
In the words of the old children's song, "Cobbler, cobbler, mend my shoe." I urge you to support legislation that would support injured workers who are trying to become whole again.
Please visit this website for more information from the injured worker's point of view: www.voicesflorida.com.
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