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Bill to remove weekly wage cap splits business and labor in Helena hearing

Business, Labor, and Economic Affairs · February 20, 2025
AI-Generated Content: All content on this page was generated by AI to highlight key points from the meeting. For complete details and context, we recommend watching the full video. so we can fix them.

Summary

SB 308 would eliminate the statutory cap on the weekly wage used to calculate workers' compensation benefits, prompting labor groups to argue it restores fairness for higher-wage injured workers and business groups to warn of significant premium increases and weakened incentives to return to work.

Senate Business, Labor and Economic Affairs heard Senate Bill 308, a proposal to strike the statutory cap that currently limits the weekly wage used to compute workers' compensation weekly benefits.

Sponsor Senator Derek Harvey said Montana's current average-weekly-wage cap (the figure published annually by the Department of Labor) prevents higher-earning workers from receiving the 66.67% wage replacement the statute otherwise guarantees. "If somebody's accustomed to a lifestyle based off of their wage and they get hurt at work, I feel that they should at…

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