Term Of The Day – Make Work
A make work job is a job that has less final benefit than the job costs to support. Make-work is a rather controversial return to work issue for Workers Compensation. Certain states do not allow an employer to create a job just to reduce the length of the temporary total or temporary partial benefits period.
To not be a make-work job, the position should have existed before the injury. Numerous court cases in the 1990s set the precedence for returning workers to a modified job.. There are many heavily modified jobs that are created to have the employee get back into a full work week routine after returning from a Workers Comp injury.
I do not necessarily agree that these types of jobs should be seen as illegal. If an injured employee has been out of work for more than a few weeks, they (and the employer) need a break-in period. If an employer makes this type of employment permanent, that may quickly come under the scrutiny of the local Workers Comp Commission or Insurance Department.
The State of North Carolina was the first to make this ruling in the Workers Comp courts in the mid 1990’s. In my research, other states have made the same ruling.
