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Move Along, Nothing to Investigate Here

By Shannon in News on Oct 22, 2006 8:25PM

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Over the weekend, the Sun-Times delved into the seedy underworld of disability claims by city workers. Their findings? That our love/hate relationship with Chicago just tipped back into "hate" again ...

Thursday, the ST reported that worker's compensation claims for city workers far outstrip any other occupation around. Nearly one in five city employees under patronage - ay, there's the rub - have filed an injury-related claim over the past two decades, many of them more than once, some of them running in families. That must have meant a lot of people taking off work, right? One would think so, considering the many orange cones in sight around the city with no workers within miles of them, but a large number of supposedly injured employees never took off work, collecting checks all the while.

Friday's story involves workers on disability that (gasp!) want to come back to work, but the city's not finding any jobs for them. Reasons range from equal opportunity laws and union rules to "we just don't have any openings"-style explanations. Some lawyers inside the system think it's bunk, and that the city finds it easier to pay them for staying home. Would taxpayers say the same?

Finally, today the Sun-Times looks at three former city workers who have qualified as "permanently and totally disabled" due to injuries on the job, yet all these men have jobs - sometimes two - in the private sector. When we think about that level of disability, we think maybe paranoid schizophrenia, a "Johnny Got His Gun"-type situation, etc. The kind where you can't even function, let alone obtain other employment. But no, not only do the afflicted employees work, they still get disability checks and pensions. Sounds fair.

All of these stories seem to coincide with the infamous "clout" list of Da Mare. That list also helped a related case of an ex-alderman's son collecting checks for nine years, while he never held a job after his injury, nor did he file an initial claim. So, Daley: you hirin'?

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