Methods for Identifying the Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing Workforce Population - Agriculture Forestry and Fishing Research at NIOSH - page 302

TABLE E-6 Paid Claims Under Workers' Compensation Insurance, Hired Farm
Workers, California, 1990-1999, Claim Frequency Report (Level 5)
Type of Claim Number of Claims

Fatalities 455

Major permanent disability 12,932

Minor permanent disability 31,958

Temporary disability 68,357

Medical only/no indemnity payment to claimant 185,029

Total 298,731

SOURCE: Classification Experience Reports, 1990-1999 (Level 5), Workers' Compensation Insurance
Rating Bureau of California, San Francisco, California.

employer or the insurer (“open claims”) whereas others may involve lengthy, multi-
year rehabilitation or medical treatment. Under California law, an occupational
injury or illness that requires hospitalization or leads to loss of more than 3 days
of work results in an indemnity payment in lieu of lost wages; if the number of
lost workdays is lower, no indemnity is paid. Table D-6 does not show the actu-
arial analysis of the most serious incidents (those amounting to a loss of $5,000 as
measured by combined medical and indemnity costs), which includes the nature
of an injury, the nature of an accident, the body part injured, and other variables.
The latter data could inform occupational safety research.
Surveillance of AFF workers would be best accomplished by thinking first in
terms of all workers in each AFF sector. From there, it makes sense to consider
surveillance of all five categories of workers—self-employed workers, unpaid family
workers, directly hired laborers, contract laborers, other employees of large-scale
firms—in each of the three AFF subsectors. Datasets on workers' compensation
are reasonably reliable for surveillance of fatalities and serious injuries or illnesses
among hired workers but less reliable for minor cases.