JOBS ARE LEAVING MISSOURI

Roger Mainor sits and wonders these days. A solid and well-respected Cape Girardeau entrepreneur, Mainor has plants in Cape (70 employees) and Fredericktown (22 employees). Until recently, he had hopes of adding 20-25 more jobs this year. Today, Mainor asks himself: "Is there anyone in Missouri government who cares that I'm about to be forced to move 12 or 15 jobs to Illinois or Arkansas?"

Workers' compensation. A complex, multi-faceted subject, to be sure. Difficult to get a handle on. Perhaps, though, it's about to be made simple, even vividly so. For the exporting of Missouri jobs to other, lower-cost states, hinted at for so long, is now under way.

No longer is this a dark and idle forecast made by frustrated business people. It's happening. It's happening now. Does anyone care?

Roger Mainor owns Magnetic Collectibles, a manufacturer of novelties such as refrigerator magnets. An enterprising fellow, Mainor has grown the company himself through grit and determination and lots of hard work. He treats his people well. They enjoy good benefit packages. His plants are immaculate. He pays his bills on time and does his darndest to pay the taxes and get past the regulatory boulders that modern government places in the path of anyone who seeks to hire people and make an honest living.

NCCI is a national company based in Florida, a rating service with expertise in workers' compensation insurance. NCCI establishes workers' comp insurance rates for companies in most of the states across America, including Missouri. NCCI recently had blockbuster news for Roger Mainor.

In the manufacture of Mainor's product, both plastics and rubber are used. Previously, his company had been classified as a plastics user, with the workers' comp rate applicable to that classification. The new year brought a body blow in the form of this news: Mainor's local insurance agent called to inform him that NCCI was changing his classification from plastics to rubber. Why is that bad news? Being moved to the rubber classification meant a 40 percent rate increase in workers' comp premiums. A 40 percent increase in one year!

This was not the end of the bad news. To his horror, Mainor recently learned not only that he will see a 40 percent increase, but that increase will be imposed retroactively. For this small but prospering manufacturing concern, it's an increased cost item of $56,000 in one year. This new, 40 percent rate increase is on top of a 10-15 percent increase with which he was already struggling to cope this year.

It so happens that in 1992, the year before I arrived in Jefferson City as a freshman senator, legislators passed a law to try to address the plight of businesses in Mainor's situation. They set up a new board to be appointed by the governor, a group to whom business people placed in Mainor's situation could appeal classification decisions made by NCCI.

There's only one problem. We're going on two years since the passage of that law, and no members of the appeal board have ever been appointed. That's right: the ugly truth is there is no one to whom Roger Mainor can appeal.

This Tuesday afternoon, February 8, a Senate committee on which I sit, the committee on Labor and Industrial Relations, will hold its weekly hearing. The committee, chaired by Sen. William L. Clay Jr., D.-St. Louis, will hear several bills, among them Senate Bill 717. Introduced by Sen. John Scott, D.-St. Louis, SB 717 is a bipartisan effort to enact the common sense reforms we must have in workers' comp. I have invited Roger Mainor to come to Jefferson City to testify at that hearing, so that his story can be told in the widest possible public forum.

Further, I have communicated to the governor's office that I am seeking for Roger an appointment with Governor Mel Carnahan and his top staff to address this problem. In this critical situation I seek no partisan advantage. The matter is much too serious to be so trivialized. It's time to act, if not to help Roger Mainor keep his jobs in Missouri, then to prevent a catastrophic repetition.

The time for idle talk is past. From the ugly truth about Missouri's broken system of workers' comp insurance, we can avert our gaze no longer. It is time, figuratively speaking, to scream bloody murder. It is time to act.

A state government that can move heaven and earth to pass a riverboat gambling amendment in under two weeks now faces a challenge. Will we meet it?

Roger Mainor is preparing to move jobs to Illinois, or Arkansas. He has no choice. Other employers across Missouri are staring full in the face at the same grim facts. He wonders: Does anyone care?