The White House announced a new initiative to improve the safety of Federal civilian employees. The Protecting Our Workers and Ensuring Reemployment (POWER) Initiative aims to decrease the incidents of injury and illness cases, as well as the costs associated with such cases.
The POWER Initiative establishes seven goals for all executive departments and agencies (with the exception of the U.S. Postal Service):
- Reduce total injury and illness case rates.
- Reduce lost time injury and illness case rates
- Analyze lost time injury and illness data
- Improve filing procedures of workers' compensation claims
- Improve filing procedures of wage-loss claims
- Reduce lost production day rates
- Improve employees' return to work in cases of serious injury or illness.
According to the White House memorandum, in 2009 federal workers filed over 79,000 workplace injury and illness claims. In addition, worker’s compensation cost the federal government over $1.5 billion.