Being an employee in Texas has for years been a desired status. Available jobs, no state income tax and relatively affordable costs of living have drawn folks here for years.

But if you hit some hard times, the place isn’t so hospitable, a recently released audit shows. In fact, one could say the state is in no hurry to police employers who might abuse the rights of employees injured or otherwise compromised.

According to an audit of the division of worker’s compensation, which is operated under the aegis of the state Department of Insurance, pending workers’ comp enforcement cases have been open for an average of 467 days. That’s about a year and three months.

Fifty-eight of those cases have been open since 2007, and one lingers from 2006, when oversight for worker’s comp moved from the dismantled Texas Worker’s Compensation Commission to the insurance department. The division of workers’ comp issues disciplinary orders when providers and carriers have not complied with the law.

Among the audit’s findings:

• Workers’ comp enforcement cases assigned to staff attorneys should be reviewed monthly to make sure they are moving forward. But between March 2009 and March 2010, the division conducted two such reviews.
• Reports monitoring workers’ comp enforcement cases contained inaccurate or duplicate case information.
• As of February, 61 pending cases were assigned to individuals who had left the workers’ comp division in 2009.
• When compared with other enforcement teams at the Department of Insurance, the workers’ comp enforcement team closes a higher percentage of cases with a warning letter and no monetary penalty – 82 percent – than other enforcement teams, such as property or casualty insurance, at 45 percent.
  

It’s almost as if the state were favoring business interests over those of employees.

When we read that another state agency is spending public money on conferences that counsel business owners on how to avoid paying unemployment, it all makes more sense.

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