Contact Information
- Website - Division of Worker's Compensation
- Email - Bureau of Claims Management
General Guidelines for Temporary Partial Disability Computations
- Part-time employees ----Use actual wage at the time of the injury, NOT THE EXPANDED WAGES, to compute the wage loss. There is an exception when there are two jobs involved. Call us at (608) 266-1340.
- TTD & TPD in the same week -- Figure the entire week as a week of TPD. The amount of earnings to enter will be the amount earned from the employer. Do not enter any TTD paid amounts. If there are days worked and TPD due in the same week, the entire week is then figured as TPD. The earned amount is only the earnings paid by the employer for the days worked in the week.
- Time off with pay by employee's choice; holiday during the week of TPD should be added to the amount earned before calculating wage loss. However, vacation pay is an earned fringe benefit and does not relieve the employer from any obligation to pay temporary disability benefits. Therefore, do not add vacation pay into the earnings column when performing TPD calculations. Rather, compute the loss based on work available. For example, if a person took 8 hours of vacation on a particular day, but 4 hours of work was available, then use the 4 hours available as work offered, but declined.
- Availability of restricted employment during the healing period If an employer provides work at a lower wage than the wage earned at the time of the injury, the employee who fails or refuses to accept such offer remains entitled to TPD benefits based on his or her proportional wage loss had he/she accepted the work. However, if the employer can not or does not make restricted work available, the employee remains entitled to TTD until work is available or an end of healing is reached, whichever occurs first.
- Plant (employer) shutdown in accordance with a collective bargaining agreement (reference s.102.43(8)(b). e.g. vacation, model changeover etc. If no work is available to the employee, TPD continues as it did before the plant shutdown. If the shutdown is not in accordance with a union contract or there is a general layoff situation, TTD is paid for the weeks of the shutdown or layoff.
- Escalation per 102.43(7) -- If there is a renewed period of TTD or TPD more than 2 years after the injury date, the escalated rate should be used in column 8 on the TPD supplement form (WKC-7359-E). However, the weekly wage at the time of the injury (column 5 on the TPD supplement form) remains the same. If there have been continuous TTD and/or TPD benefits, there is no escalation. The employee must have returned to work for at least 10 days preceding the renewed period for the escalation to take effect.
- Swing Shift Employees - The Department considers the entire swing shift period in determining if there is any wage loss for compensating TPD during the healing period . Trusdale v.Curwood, Inc., WC Claim No. 2008013039 (LIRC Dec. 28, 2009).