ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 26, 1997 TAG: 9701240014
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
EVA Marie Perkins' hands gave out last year. After toiling for 14 years as a garment worker in an area textile plant and then having surgery, "I can't hold anything," she said.
Her employer, Bassett-Walker Inc. of Martinsville, stopped paying her because she could not work. She owes doctors and a hospital at least $1,000.
She won't be getting any money from her employer's workers' compensation plan, however, even though Perkins blames her ailment on the repetitiveness of her job - sewing tags on shirts and pants. Her wrists are her Achilles' heel. She was diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome.
Eleven months ago this week, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that Virginia law bans workers' compensation for the most common type of carpal tunnel syndrome, in which the ailment develops over time. The court said the law needs to be broadened before coverage can become available.
The decision appears to have cost Perkins - for now, at least - a chance for needed financial assistance for her condition and the satisfaction which she said would have come from having her employer pay to remedy a health problem she attributes to her job.
"It's not fair. They use us up and, then, when we're no good to them, we're kicked to the curb," Perkins, 50, said.
State lawmakers appear to want to address the issue. This month, they began work on legislation that would reverse the court ruling. They have until the end of this year's General Assembly session on Feb. 22 to decide between two basic approaches of compensating workers with carpal tunnel syndrome and other gradual injuries brought on by repetitive tasks performed at work.
A labor-supported bill would declare repetitive-motion disorders injuries and a business-backed measure would treat them as occupational diseases and carry a higher standard of proof. The end result, if either measure or a compromise is passed, would mean the end of a yearlong period in which no new cases were accepted. The state would resume approving workers for the workers' compensation package of benefits, that can include money to live on, medical and rehabilitation expenses and retraining funds.
Just how many people with gradual injuries are being denied coverage is unknown, but more than 500 people claiming a gradual injury applied for benefits in Virginia in 1995. Nationally, 332,000 people reported repetitive-motion injuries in 1994, up 10 percent from the year before and up 800 percent in 10 years. This is the latest national information available.
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In distribution center No. 1 of the Bassett-Walker Inc. textile plant in Martinsville, there was an unusual pattern of activity last year and earlier this year.
Perkins, a sewer, would get up from her work station, enter the women's restroom and run her dry hands under the warm air of a hand dryer. She would do this as often as four times a day. Sometimes, she also would wipe tears from her eyes because her wrists hurt so bad.
"I continued to work at my own pace and cried all night," she said.
While she was on the job, the company provided information about repetitive-motion injuries and a black wrist brace that she wore while working. But the disorder took its course, gradually reducing the strength in her hands and increasing the pain, she said.
The condition affected "anything I would pick up in the morning. Give me a coffee cup. I drop the coffee cup," she said. "Or just reaching down to pick up the sugar bowl. I would think I would have it and it would be gone. Button my clothes? My husband still has to button my clothes.
"I know in my mind where it come from," she said, and that was from years of sewing, manual packaging tasks and jobs such as sweeping at Bassett-Walker, which paid her about $300 a week. "It was their fault I was hurting like this."
Diagnosed as having carpal tunnel syndrome on May 20, 1996, Perkins had surgery on one wrist July 3, 1996, and had the procedure done on her other wrist later. Doctors took steps that lessened the pain in her hands but could not immediately restore her strength or do much for the cold in her hands, she said. She is trying to build strength by lifting 21/2-pound barbells at home. She has never returned to work.
The company sent her a letter denying her request for benefits. Believing she had no chance of getting help, she did not file a workers' compensation claim. Bassett-Walker "made me feel there was no need to do this," she said.
A lawyer advised her it would be smart to wait, said Anita Lawrence of Martinsville, founder and director of Citizens to Improve Workers' Compensation, a nonprofit educational group. Perkins has 15 months left to apply for workers' compensation and could benefit if the General Assembly restores aid to carpal tunnel syndrome sufferers.
Carl Reynolds, Bassett-Walker's top human resources official, said the company had no comment on Perkins' case.
"Whatever the law is, we're going to comply with it and, of course, we try to be as humane as we can," Reynolds said.
The company gave no reason for its silence on the Perkins matter, but the legal nature of the issue generally would make an employer reluctant to comment. Perkins has a right to a file a lawsuit, seeking benefits on grounds that the company provided a hazardous workplace. She has not filed such a suit.
Bassett-Walker could argue that with workers' compensation benefits not a legal option, it was powerless to help her. Roanoke lawyer Gary Lumsden, who files workers' compensation claims on behalf of workers but is not involved in representing Perkins, said granting Perkins a gift of company funds could have brought requests from other of Bassett-Walker's 7,000 employees facing financial troubles.
Lumsden and Richard Thomas, another Roanoke lawyer who also files workers' compensation claims, said it's reasonable to presume that Perkins could have qualified for workers' compensation benefits as long as her doctor believed her condition was primarily caused by her work and had workers' compensation remained available to sufferers of repetitive-motion disorders. Neither lawyer represents Perkins, however.
Earlier this month, seated in her home generously decorated with family pictures and religious icons, she displayed a pile of medical and job-related paperwork received since the onset of her condition.
After her paychecks stopped, she said, disability payments began and will run for two years, pretty much matching her income while she was working. She shoulders the entire cost of a health insurance plan through Bassett-Walker - which covers a portion of her medical costs - or else she loses her disability checks, she said.
Financially, she said she couldn't make it without the income of her husband, Robert, a 32-year employee of J&J Southeast, a cardboard-making division of Georgia-Pacific Corp. Their income still falls short of the amount needed to pay her share of her medical bills - $1,000, which she expects will go higher. She said she believes her credit is ruined because of bills they haven't been able to pay.
"I'm sorry, and I hope God will forgive me, but I feel I'm being screwed every way possible," Perkins said.
Had she qualified, workers' compensation would have paid all medical expenses, including reimbursement of mileage for trips to see her doctor. Also, she would have received two-thirds of her wages from the workers' compensation system, as long as she needed assistance with living expenses because she was out of work. She could have been paid for up to 500 weeks, or nearly 10 years.
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In 1969, the Virginia Supreme Court said: "The wear and tear of human beings in modern industry should be charged to the industry, just as the wear and tear of machinery has always been charged."
Why that isn't the case for Perkins and others like her is explained in a subsequent Virginia Supreme Court ruling, on March 1, 1996. The justices have made clear they accept that knitting, typing, cutting hair, trimming meat and other repetitive actions can injure the wrists, shoulders and other parts of the body. But they found that Virginia law does not specify benefits will be paid in such cases. The court said the General Assembly would need to write such a specification into law for coverage to become available again.
When the ruling first appeared, no one already receiving benefits had his or her aid cut. Earlier cases were decided in more lenient times; for years, the Virginia Workers' Compensation Commission has awarded benefits to people who developed their ailments over time and the Virginia Court of Appeals upheld those decisions.
The Supreme Court had reversed workers' compensation officials as early as 1943 for granting benefits to people with gradually developed disorders which were not specifically covered by the law. The latest ruling restated that prohibition in stronger terms, and workers' compensation officials immediately said they would follow it.
Thomas, the Roanoke lawyer, said he knows of an instance in which a worker with carpal tunnel syndrome received benefits shortly before the ruling and a co-worker in the same office with a virtually identical job and diagnosis was denied benefits because that worker's case had not been processed by the time of the ruling.
"You got people in identical situations, but purely because of the timing, one get benefits, one does not," Thomas said.
Treatments for carpal tunnel syndrome - involving splinting of the wrists, anti-inflammatory drugs or surgery - have achieved "mixed success" at preparing suffers to return to their old jobs, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As for Perkins' interest in pursuing a different line of work, she said she has been too angry at being denied benefits and too busy recuperating to think about it. She said she went to see a therapist because she felt depressed.
"I understand why people commit suicide," she said. "It's not fair. We get pushed in a corner after we give somebody all our lives."
But there is hope in her voice as well. "Something has got to give," she said. "If we can get enough people to stand up and holler out loud, 'We're not taking this laying down,' I truly believe [the legislature] will overturn this ruling. Maybe God chose me as one of the spokespersons for this."
LENGTH: Long : 175 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Roger Hart. Eva Marie Perkins suffers from carpal tunnelby CNBsyndrome and owes at least $1,000 in medical bills because she no
longer can work. She blames her condition on doing repetitive chores
as a garment worker at Bassett-Walker of Martinsville. color.