Tag: 2015 News

Governor Brown has appointed of Debra Lee and Eric Berg as the newest Cal/OSHA Deputy Chiefs. The appointments build on Lee and Berg’s combined 39 years of experience working with Cal/OSHA to strengthen workplace health and safety.

“Governor Brown appointed two of the most experienced and informed Cal/OSHA employees to help guide the division into the future,” said DIR Director Christine Baker. Cal/OSHA, officially known as the Division of Occupational Safety and Health, is a division of DIR.

As Deputy Chief of Safety with Cal/OSHA’s Enforcement Branch, Debra Lee will oversee investigations and inspections of California’s worksites. Her duties will include managing Cal/OSHA’s regular enforcement offices statewide, as well as the specialized Mining and Tunneling, High Hazard and Labor Enforcement Task Force units.

As Deputy Chief of Health, Eric Berg will manage Cal/OSHA’s research and standards activities, including the development of health and safety regulations. He will also oversee Cal/OSHA’s Medical and Toxicology, Asbestos and Carcinogen and Crane units.

The new appointees will serve under the general direction of Cal/OSHA Chief Juliann Sum. “I have worked closely with both Debra Lee and Eric Berg, and have complete confidence in their ability to carry out our critical responsibilities in enforcement, research and standards,” said Chief Sum.

Debra Lee originally joined Cal/OSHA as an industrial hygienist with the High Hazard Unit in 1994. She was promoted several times, most recently to Acting Deputy Chief of Field Enforcement in April 2015. Lee holds a bachelor’s degree in health science from Cal State University Northridge and knew at an early age that she wanted a career protecting working people. She is inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote, “All labor has dignity.”

Eric Berg also started his career with Cal/OSHA as an industrial hygienist in 1997. He has served as a safety engineer in multiple units, and was promoted to Acting Deputy Chief of Research and Standards in April 2015. Berg holds a master’s degree in environmental health engineering from University of California, Berkeley, and a bachelor’s in civil engineering from Cal State University Chico. He is also fluent in the Spanish language.

A port trucking firm in Carson has been ordered to turn over nearly $7 million in back pay to 38 drivers, the latest in a series of recent wins for port drivers and the Teamsters union that has been trying to organize them.

The state Labor Commissioner’s Office ruled this month that the drivers at Pacific 9 Transportation were improperly treated as independent contractors rather than as employees. It ordered the company to compensate drivers for illegal paycheck deductions, back wages and legal costs, payouts that amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars for some.

According to the report in the Los Angeles Times, the decision affects just a fraction of the nearly 12,000 drivers who haul cargo at the local ports. But the order shows that labor organizers are having some success in using employee classification claims to push trucking firms to treat drivers as employees – who, unlike contractors, are allowed to unionize.

Disputes between trucking companies and port truck drivers have become common in recent years, but typically state labor regulators handle classification complaints individually or in small groups. But the recent case involving Pacific 9 – as well as two others involving trucking firms – was heard en masse, with the Labor Commissioner’s Office ruling in favor of dozens of drivers at once. These larger actions could spark an acceleration in the number of claims against trucking firms at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, most of which say their workers are independent contractors, according to labor organizers.

“There are hundreds of trucking companies at the ports, and the vast majority are misclassifying drivers,” said Julie Gutman Dickinson, an attorney who has represented the Teamsters union and is on the advisory board of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, a labor-backed advocacy group that represented drivers in the Pacific 9 case.

Labor Commissioner Julie Su said 720 truck drivers have filed complaints with her office since 2012. The office has ruled in three cases affecting more than 100 drivers since July. “In this industry, we have found misclassification routinely in the case we’ve heard,” she said.

It is likely that these misclassification situations have an adverse effect on workers’ compensation premiums for the trucking industry.

The Division of Workers’ Compensation has posted an adjustment to the pathology and clinical laboratory section of the Official Medical Fee Schedule to conform to the 2016 changes in the Medicare payment system, as required by Labor Code section 5307.1.

The update includes all fee schedule changes identified in Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Change Request (CR) number CR 9465, which can be accessed on the CMS website.

The 2016 update includes significant changes to the codes and rules related to drug testing. The Administrative Director’s order adopts the Medicare 2016 Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule and the “Calendar Year (CY) 2016 Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule (CLFS) Final Determinations” document. The order is effective for services rendered on or after Jan. 1, 2016 and can be found on the DWC website .

Some analysts believe the rate changes for lab testing could shave as much as 91% off the price of some tests. Current coding for testing for drugs of abuse relies on a structure of “screening” (known as “presumptive” testing) followed by “confirmation” to confirm the results of the screening tests and quantitative or “definitive” testing that identifies the specific drug and quantity in the patient. CMS was concern about the potential for overpayment when billing for each individual drug test rather than a single code that pays the same amount regardless of the number of drugs that are being tested.

Thus in 2014 CMS created alphanumeric G codes to replace the 2014 CPT codes that were deleted for 2015. In Jul y 2015, CMS proposed to delete all current drug testing G codes, and continue to not recognize the new AMA CPT codes, and create a single G code for presumptive testing and a single G code for definitive testing. After public comment the final rule creates three G codes for presumptive testing and for definitive drug testing, it will create four tiered G codes. The revised fee schedule will continue to not recognize the AMA CPT codes 80300 – 80377

Photocopy services are required to be registered and bonded under Business and Professions Code sections 22450 and 22455. However section 22451(b) exempts “[a]member of the State Bar or his or her employees, agents, or independent contractors” from the registration requirements. This WCAB en banc case considered a photocopy lien claimant’s contention that it was exempt from being registered and bonded.

Rogelio Cornejo through his attorney Jonathan C. Rosen, Esq., of the JCR Law Group, Inc., filed two Applications for Adjudication of Claim. Both were jointly settled by a compromise and release agreement. As part of the agreement, defendant agreed to “pay, adjust or litigate any and all liens filed according to Labor Code § 4903.5, reserving any and all-defenses, with the WCAB retaining jurisdiction in the event of a dispute.”

Western Imaging Services (WIS) filed a lien claim for “copy service” in one of the cases in the amount of $1,585.56. At the time WIS was not registered and bonded, but was by the time the case was decided. The WCJ disallowed the lien claim of WIS based upon his finding that “Business and Professions Code Section 22451 did not exempt lien claimant Western Imaging Services from registration and bonding pursuant to Sections 22450 and 22455.”

The WCAB reversed in the en banc decision of Cornejo v. Younique Cafe, Inc., Zenith Insurance.

The WCAB held that the Business and Professions Code requirements by its own terms does not apply to a lien claimant seeking to recover copy service fees that are medical-legal expenses under Labor Code section 4620(a) when the lien claimant is an agent and/or independent contractor of a member of the State Bar at the time the documents are photocopied.

When a lien claimant makes an unrebutted prima facie showing that it is an agent and/or independent contractor of a member of the State Bar at the time the documents are photocopied, proof of compliance with the registration and bonding provisions of Business and Professions Code sections 22450 and 22455 is not required.

A San Diego grand jury has indicted the owners of Good Neighbor Services as well as six accomplices for a massive, ongoing insurance fraud and tax evasion scheme. Two defendants, Hyok “Steven” and Woo “Stephanie” Kwon, own a janitorial company that provides cleaning staff to major hotels across San Diego, Los Angeles and Riverside Counties, including The Hotel Del Coronado, Loews Coronado, La Costa Resort and Spa, The Grand Del Marin La Jolla, L’Auberge Del Mar, The Ritz Carlton, Four Seasons, Hilton and Hyatt hotel chains.

The Kwons have been indicted on 11 counts of workers’ compensation premium fraud, 18 counts of payroll tax evasion and one count of extortion. The investigation uncovered a methodical and systematic shell game involving six straw owners. These straw owners were used to conceal the existence of hundreds of hotel workers to avoid paying millions of dollars in insurance premiums and payroll taxes. If convicted of all charges, they each face up to 31 years in prison.

Six co-defendants have also been charged with workers’ compensation premium fraud and tax evasion. They are Melquiades Brizuela Jr, Manuel Rodriguez, Veronica Lucas Cuin, Aimee Sunmyung Kwon, Daniel Kwon and Hyun Bung Chae for their involvement in the scheme. They face sentences between six and eight years in prison.

For nearly a decade, Good Neighbor Services allegedly concealed their real payroll information in order to fraudulently obtain workers’ compensation insurance from multiple companies including Travelers, Norguard, AIG, Southern Insurance, Everest National, Preferred Employers, State Compensation Insurance Fund and Employers Compensation Insurance. In doing this, the company avoided paying more than $3.6 million in insurance premiums and evaded paying over $3.3 million in payroll taxes.

Employees who were interviewed said they were paid with checks bearing the name of businesses other than Good Neighbor Services throughout the course of their employment,even though they wore uniforms with the Good Neighbor Services’ logo and identified the Kwons as the owners. The employees also said they did not receive overtime pay or workers’ compensation benefits when they were injured on the job, and they feared retaliation if they reported their injuries. One employee said she had to repeatedly ask for medical attention for her injury. When she was finally sent to a doctor, she found out later the Kwons sent her to a dentist rather than a physician.