Refusing a Light-Duty Offer in California Workers’ Comp: What Happens to Your Benefits

If you refuse a light-duty or modified-work offer that fits your doctor’s restrictions, your temporary disability checks can be reduced or stopped, and once your condition is permanent, a qualifying 12-month offer removes the job-displacement voucher (worth up to $6,000) whether or not you take the job. The key limit: the work must actually fit your restrictions. You can turn down an assignment that breaks them, and if your employer has no work within them, temporary total disability must be paid.

This guide covers injuries on or after January 1, 2013. Older injuries use different offer forms and timing for the voucher.

Two different offers, two different consequences

A claim can involve two different offers. The first comes while you are still recovering and your treating doctor allows some work with restrictions; it affects your temporary disability (TD) payments. The second comes after your condition is found permanent and stationary (no longer improving or getting worse) with some permanent disability; it affects the supplemental job displacement benefit, a voucher for retraining and related costs.

While you recover, the work must fit your restrictions

The Division of Workers’ Compensation’s guidebook chapter on working after an injury says any work your employer assigns while you recover must meet your doctor’s work restrictions. It is direct about the choice: “You don’t have to accept an assignment that does not meet the restrictions.” If you refuse for that reason, explain clearly how the assignment fails the restrictions, in writing if possible. If your employer cannot give you work that meets them, the claims administrator must pay temporary total disability. The guidebook adds that an employer action or threat because you turned down such an assignment could violate Labor Code section 132a, which protects injured workers from discrimination.

Put the doctor’s latest work-status report beside the written duties. If the report says no lifting over 20 pounds, a “light duty” stocking job that requires heavier lifting does not meet it, whatever it is called. If the duties are vague, ask for them in writing.

What refusing suitable work does to your checks

The DWC’s temporary disability chapter describes TD as owed when your doctor says you cannot do your usual job and your employer does not offer other work that pays your usual wages. If the offered work pays less, the benefit is temporary partial disability: under Labor Code section 4654, two-thirds of the weekly wage loss.

Section 4657 measures that loss against what you “will probably be able to earn during the disability.” In our reading, a suitable job you were offered is strong evidence of what you could earn, so refusing it generally does not turn partial benefits into total ones. For illustration, if you earned $1,200 a week and refuse suitable work paying $900, the administrator may measure partial disability as if you earned $900: $200 a week instead of $1,100 with the job. If the offer pays your full usual wage, TD may stop altogether. Our temporary partial disability guide shows how to check the weekly calculation.

After your condition is permanent, the offer decides the voucher

Under Labor Code section 4658.7, a worker with permanent partial disability is entitled to the voucher unless the employer makes a qualifying offer of regular, modified or alternative work lasting at least 12 months. The offer, on the state’s Notice of Offer of Regular, Modified, or Alternative Work (DWC-AD 10133.35), must come within 60 days after the claims administrator receives the first report from your treating doctor, an agreed medical evaluator or a qualified medical evaluator, on the state’s Physician’s Return-to-Work & Voucher Report (DWC-AD 10133.36), finding that all your claimed conditions are permanent and stationary with permanent partial disability. If no qualifying offer is made, the voucher must be offered within 20 days after that period ends.

Section 4658.1 defines what qualifies:

• Regular work is your usual job at equivalent wages and compensation.
• Modified work is your job changed so you can perform all its functions, at no less than 85 percent of your wages and compensation at the time of injury.
• Alternative work is a different job you can perform, at the same 85 percent minimum.

Each must be within a reasonable commuting distance of where you lived when you were hurt. Pay for added hours beyond your usual schedule does not count toward the wage test.

The guidebook explains the consequence of a qualifying offer. You have 30 days to accept it, and the administrator is not required to offer the voucher: “This is true whether or not you accept the offer.” The state’s one-time $5,000 Return-to-Work Supplement is available only to a worker who received the voucher, under the program’s eligibility rule. Turning down a qualifying offer can therefore mean neither the job nor the voucher. By contrast, a late offer, a job lasting under 12 months (apart from qualifying seasonal work), pay below 85 percent or work outside your restrictions does not end the voucher.

Check the offer before you answer

Before you accept or refuse, check the documents:

• Restrictions and pay. Compare each written duty with the latest restrictions, and the offered pay with what you earned when hurt, at your usual hours.
• Location. If the commute is unreasonable, say so in writing. Under section 4658.1, accepting the job and not objecting to the location within 20 days after being told of the right to object waives the commuting requirement.
• Dates. Note when the offer arrived and when the claims administrator received the first report finding your condition permanent and stationary; the 60 days run from that receipt. Answer a permanent-stage offer in writing within its 30 days.

If you try the work and cannot do it within your restrictions, report that promptly and factually, and return to your treating doctor. In our view, a documented attempt that failed within your restrictions stands on different footing from a refusal.

The same letter can affect your weekly checks, your voucher and your job.