New York Tries To Save Benefits For Workers

State officials say they may have to create a $200 million emergency fund to finance workers’ compensation benefits for thousands of injured New Yorkers because 12 trusts that provided insurance to their employers have failed financially.

The self-insured trusts provide workers’ compensation insurance to groups of small- to medium-size employers in the same industry, and the failure of so many of them in recent months has sparked fears of a cutoff in benefits to thousands of injured workers. It has also generated criticism that the State Workers’ Compensation Board was lax in regulating the trusts. There are 50 group trusts remaining in the state that provide insurance to more than 20,000 businesses with a total of about 500,000 employees.