Social Security Windfall Elimination Provision

The Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) addresses Social Security retirement and disability benefits and generally affects individuals who earned a pension through their employment with a government agency and who also paid Social Security taxes through other employment endeavors. The WEP only affects federal employees whose pension derives from the Civil Service Retirement System. The WEP was instituted to remedy the inequity where individuals whose employment was not covered by Social Security nevertheless had their Social Security benefits computed as if they were lower-wage workers in addition to receiving a pension from their employment. A lower-wage worker receives a higher percentage of their pre-retirement earnings as their benefit amount than does a higher-wage worker.

Act of God and the Concept of "Arising Out of the Employment"

An act of God includes natural occurrences over which man generally has no control such as tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and lightening. Though an employee is injured due to an act of God, he may still recover workers' compensation benefits if he can show that the nature of his employment placed him at a greater risk for injury due to such an act of God. For example, consider the repairman who is required to work on downed power lines during a storm. He performs his work while a thunderstorm rages by standing in a bucket raised high into the air from the back of his repair truck. This situation would appear to elevate the employee's chances of being struck by lightening over the average individual. As such, it is likely that the employee would be compensated for an injury by lightening.

Traveling To and From Work

Employees do not only suffer injuries while actively in the service of their employer. Some injuries occur outside working hours while the employee is traveling to or from work. Workers' compensation for such injuries may be recovered only if they occur on the employer's premises. The employer's "premises" is not just that area in which the employee normally works or where the majority of work performed for the employer takes place. Rather, "premises" encompasses the entire grounds of the employer including all buildings and structures thereon as well as parking lots. Generally, compensation will be denied if the employee was injured elsewhere. Additionally, this "going and coming" rule for compensability is only applicable when the employee has established working hours and a set working location.

Compensation for Federal Employees

As opposed to state Workers' Compensation Acts, federal employees who receive on-the-job injuries are specifically covered by the Federal Employee Compensation Act (FECA). FECA operates much like state statutes; it outlines a no-fault system that provides federal employees with fixed benefits in exchange for the loss of the right to sue the government. FECA covers both the disability and death of a federal employee, and outlines the types of benefits available to a federal employee in either event.

"Past Relevant Work" in Social Security Disability Evaluation

In determining an individual's entitlement to social security disability benefits, his ability to perform past relevant work will be examined. As part of the evaluation process, the individual's residual functional capacity (RFC) is determined. If the RFC assessment shows that the individual can either perform the actual duties of his past jobs or that he can perform the duties of his past occupations as generally required by employers throughout the United States, he will not be considered disabled.