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Sington v. Chrysler Corp.7/31/2002
a disability has been established under § 301(4).
Under the Pulley and Rea approach, rather than concluding that any employee who is unable to perform a single job because of a work-related injury has a "disability" under § 301(4), a worker's compensation magistrate or the WCAC should consider whether the injury has actually resulted in a loss of wage earning capacity in work suitable to the employee's training and qualifications in the ordinary job market.
In sum, we conclude, as did the Rea Court before us, that "disability" as defined in MCL 418.301(4) cannot plausibly be read as describing an employee who is unable to perform one particular job because of a work-related injury , but who suffers no reduction in wage earning capacity.
B.
This conclusion stands in contrast to the one the Haske majority reached. In Haske, supra at 634, this Court concluded that § 301(4) defined disability as "a personal injury or work-related disease that prevents an employee from performing any work, even a single job , within his qualifications and training . . . ." Because of the words the Legislature used in § 301(4), the Haske definition of disability is untenable. The plain meaning of the definition of "disability" in § 301(4) as "a limitation of an employee's wage earning capacity in work suitable to his qualifications and training" precludes regarding a person as disabled when an inability to perform one particular job does not, in fact, reduce that person's wage earning capacity in other, equally well-paying work suitable to his qualifications and training. Section 301(4) specifically directs the reader to a consideration of whether there is a limitation in wage earning capacity, not of whether a person is merely limited in performing one (or more) particular jobs.
In this regard, Justice Weaver astutely observed in her partial dissent in Haske:
I believe that the most basic interpretation of "wage earning capacity" is that it describes an employee's ability to earn wages. Perhaps because an employee is theoretically able to earn wages in a great variety of ways, the Legislature restricted consideration to "work suitable to [an employee's] qualifications and training." Where an employee is qualified and trained in more than one job , then his wage-earning capacity includes consideration of all those jobs under the plain meaning of subsection 301(4). Whether "a limitation" exists in an individual's "wage earning capacity" where that individual is qualified and trained in more than one job therefore requires consideration of the effect of the work-related disease or injury on earning capacity in all those jobs in which the individual is qualified and trained. The statute does not state or imply that inability to perform one job within the individual's qualifications and training necessarily results in "a limitation wage earning capacity." Thus, I cannot agree with the majority's conclusion that "an employee is disabled if there is at least a single job within his qualifications and training that he can no longer perform." I believe the majority's conclusion fails to consider whether the overall wage-earning capacity of the individual was actually limited and, therefore, is not true to the plain language of subsection 301(4). [Haske, supra at 668 (Weaver, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (first emphasis in original, second emphasis added; citation omitted).]
We agree with Justice Weaver that the language of § 301(4) requires a determination of overall, or in other words, maximum, wage earning capacity in all jobs suitable to an injured employee's qualifications and training.
We recognize that the Haske majorit
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