Workplace accidents often leave injured workers permanently unable to perform their pre-injury duties. Just as often, their employers can’t or won’t accommodate their permanent work restrictions. Under these circumstances, workers’ compensation insurance companies must continue paying full disability benefits. However, the Virginia Workers’ Compensation Act grants them the right to conduct job search activities to locate alternative work for the injured workers. Furthermore, the workers’ right to continuing compensation payments is contingent upon cooperating with reasonable job search efforts. Many workers in this scenario may say, “That’s fine, but I'm not going to take a job for less pay than I was making before my injury.” Because their right to continuing payments depends upon cooperating with job search efforts, those workers risk losing their compensation if they bring that attitude to the job search process. Furthermore, insurance companies are not off the hook if the new job pays less. Rather, they must pay partial disability benefits equal to two-thirds of any wage loss suffered.
Obviously, insurance companies would love to place all injured workers in equal-paying new jobs since that would eliminate their obligation to pay any compensation benefits. But such placements are few and far between. Injured workers can take heart in knowing, however, that compensation is available to them when placed in lower-paying jobs.