Tracking Employers Without Workers Comp Coverage In North Carolina
Without Workers Comp coverage whose job is it to track employers?
For clarification:
- NCRB – North Carolina Rate Bureau
- NCDOL – North Carolina Department of Labor
- NCIC – North Carolina Industrial Commission
- NCCI – National Council on Compensation Insurance – not NC state government
- NCDOI – North Carolina Department of Insurance
- NCDOR – North Carolina Department of Revenue
- NCESC – North Carolina Employment Security Commission
Two weeks ago, the Raleigh News & Observer article asked which organization is going to track the state’s 30,000 uninsured employers for Workers Compensation and the new scofflaws? The answers were interesting yet disappointing.
All of the above mentioned state departments (except NCCI, NCDOI and NCESC) all said they have very limited resources and wish to stick to their specific departmental authority. The Editorial & Opinion page had the following comments:
- All of the departments involved are isolationists
- The lack of information sharing between departments is appalling
The bottom line is the departments do not feel they should share data with other departments which may eliminate or at least lessen the numbers of uninsured companies.
One of the NC legislators said it best – “We just suck at synchronizing things that are supposed to be helping people,” said Rep. Dale Folwell, R-Forsyth, who has worked on workers’ compensation legislation. “None of this surprises me, but it disappoints me.”
In a few articles on this situation, the weak solution seemed to lean on a new computer system that was coming in 2015. I am not sure how the new computer systems would help if the data is still not shared.
I had posted about this situation previously with a recommendation to follow the West Virginia model on Workers Comp scofflaws. The result was that all businesses in the state of WV that were not carrying WC insurance had a sign posted on their front door saying the certain businesses were operating without current WC coverage.
This caused quite a stir in WV, but set an example for the uninsured employers. This all was headed up by the West Virginia Department of Insurance. Previously, NC Governor Perdue had recommended the NCDOI should take over the investigations of non-coverage statewide. That is a great idea, if implemented.
I do understand why the NCDOL would not want to be tasked with enforcement of Workers Comp coverage. Maryland decided to have their inspectors check for WC coverage which was not a popular choice for businesses.
All the taxing and corporation databases in WV are fed into the WVDOI. It had taken a simple crosscheck program (which can be done in Excel) to point out the companies without coverage. You can quickly find out the uninsured companies using this page.
If West Virginia, while completely overhauling their system from monopolistic to a regular market system, can come up with a simple system to point out uninsured companies, why cannot NC come up with something similar?
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