POAM and its members have earned a monumental victory today with regards to workers’ compensation.
According to Gongwer, a Michigan Senate panel, the Senate Reforms, Restructuring and Reinventing Committee, has sponsored an amendment to House Bill 5002 that exempts police and firefighters from workers’ compensation changes. If the bill was passed in its original form, it would have allowed insurers to reduce or deny workers’ compensation benefits based on the money they would earn at another job.
Sen. Mark Jansen (R-Gaines Township), the committee’s chairman, sponsored the bill’s amendment.
Jansen said, “It was an agreement we worked on with police and fire. We had worked quite a few weeks on some language that would get us to where we needed to be. That was not successful; this was a success.”.
The amendment to House Bill 5002 passed by a 6-1 vote with only Sen. Patrick Colbeck (R-Canton Township) opposing the changes.
The full Senate will be voting on the legislation later today.
(© photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shinsanbc/5663152994/)
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