Bogus job offers to injured Illinois workers
We were recently contacted by a Chicago union laborer who had severely injured himself on the job and had permanent restrictions of no lifting more than 20 pounds.
Under Illinois law, if your employer can not accommodate your physical restrictions and you are as good as you are going to get medically speaking, they should offer you vocational rehabilitation. This is a process to determine what jobs you can do and if needed provide training to get one of these jobs.
Our caller is in his 50's and had never done anything other than labor work. He had been going through vocational rehabilitation and was only finding jobs that paid $10 an hour. His normal job paid over $35 an hour. If $10 was the best he could do then he would be entitled to 2/3 of the difference of that every week times 40 hours a week. In other words, this guy appears to be owed around $667 a week.
This could be a big case so the insurance company wanted to do whatever they could to find him a job. And don't you know it, at the last minute they did find him a job at $35 an hour, working for . . . . . . . . . wait for it . . . .
The INSURANCE COMPANY.
That's right, this laborer is now working a desk job that was created specially for him. This is what we call a sham job offer. We may or may not represent him, but if we do you can bet that we will call the insurance company on the carpet for what this is, a fake job. I'll bet you a quarter that if he were to settle his case right now this "job" would go away.
So we'll argue to the Arbitrator that this isn't a real job and that there is no real labor market for him in what he used to make financially. I never guarantee a client anything other than service and effort, but I can't imagine the Arbitrators at the Illinois Workers' Compensation Commission are going to find against us on this one.
We are workers' compensation attorneys that help people with Illinois work injuries anywhere in IL via our statewide network of attorneys. Contact us and we will answer your questions or find the right lawyer for your situation.
