ACC plans attracting an angry response

By RICHARD BRADDELL

A Canterbury smallgoods firm says its premiums under the old ACC system were six times higher than the cost of workplace insurance from the private sector.

The comparison was made by Nick Harris, financial director of Heller Tasty, in submissions to select committee hearings on the Government's plan to return workplace insurance to a state sector monopoly.

The majority of a mammoth 900 submissions is expected to oppose the move.

Nick Harris of Heller Tasty said that when the market was privatised, annual premiums fell from $24,000 to $4000.

While his firm had paid out $80,000 to ACC since1994, only $2000 in claims had been made. Even then, ACC had attempted to re-categorise the business and seek a further $80,000, Mr Harris said.

Speaking on behalf of the Retail Meat and Allied Trades Federation, Mr Harris said that under the best experience rating, butchers could expect a reduction from 5 to 4 per cent of wage costs under ACC, even although the industry had a low accident rate.

In contrast, an accounting firm with a bad occupational overuse injury rate could expect at to pay 2.5 per cent at most.

Another company, Thorndon Rubber, objected to being lumped in with an industry rating when its own operations produced very few accidents.

It also resented being forced to pay a share of the residual claims levy based on when the industry was 10 times larger, before import barriers came down.

But while the Dairy Board submitted that its premiums had plunged from $3.1 million to $700,000, representatives of the Trade Union Federation, which covers unions with 25,000 members, welcomed the Government's desire to restore the social contract embodied in ACC.

"It is abhorrent for the state to remove the common law right to sue for negligence and then compel the payment of a premium on every worker's wages to private - mainly overseas owned - insurance companies," the Federation submitted.

Maxine Gay of the Clothing Workers Union questioned whether workplace accidents had reduced in the private market, and said that much was due to a redefinition of what constituted an accident by the insurers.

She said that because of the fragile state of the clothing industry, many employers were encouraging their low paid and mainly women workers to say they were injured at home, to avoid change to their experience ratings.

The trade-off was the promise of the injured worker still having a job when he or she recovered.

Firms reject return to state monopoly.