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Reifsnyder v. Workers' Compensation Appeal Board9/28/2005
In these three consolidated appeals, this Court is faced with the following question concerning the 1996 amendments to Section 309(d) of the Workers' Compensation Act (the "Act"), see 77 P.S. § 582(d): what constitutes the proper calculation of a claimant's average weekly wage ("AWW") for purposes of computing a workers' compensation benefit in the situation where the injured employee was subject to work-related layoffs for business/economic reasons in the relevant look-back period? This Court has recently examined the proper calculation of a claimant's AWW under amended Section 309(d) in two cases involving materially distinct circumstances, but which are instructive in resolving the issue here. In Hannaberry HVAC v. Workers' Compensation Appeal Bd. (Snyder, Jr.), 834 A.2d 524 (Pa. 2003), we determined that the overall purpose of the 1996 amendments was to ensure an accurate calculation of an injured worker's average wages/earning capacity; and we held that the diminished wages the claimant in that case had earned as a part-time student worker were not to be included in calculating his AWW, where his disabling work injury occurred after he had graduated from high school and had been working for three months as a full-time employee. In the second matter, Colpetzer v. Workers' Compensation Appeal Bd. (Standard Steel), 870 A.2d 875 (Pa. 2005), the injured claimants had received no wages during relevant periods in the prior year only because they were on disability as a result of prior compensated work injuries; this Court held that an accurate calculation of AWW in that instance required that the periods of prior disability not be treated as if the claimants had no earning capacity at that time, but instead, the AWW already established for the prior work injuries is the measure of the AWW for the relevant prior periods of disability.
In each of the matters sub judice, the Claimant/appellee was a long-term employee of appellant Dana Corporation: Claimants Jeffrey Reifsnyder and Richard Hoffa were employed for approximately nineteen years, and claimant Dennis Remp for approximately fifteen years. Each Claimant maintained a continuing employment relationship with Employer, pursuant to the terms of a collective bargaining agreement, but were subject to periodic layoffs during downturns in Employer's production cycle, including layoffs in each of the four quarters immediately preceding the work injury at issue. In each case, both the Workers' Compensation Judge ("WCJ") and the Workers' Compensation Appeal Board ("WCAB") construed the Act as requiring that the periods of time when Claimants earned no wages due to layoffs be included in the calculation of their AWW pursuant to Section 309(d), which provides for an averaging of the weekly wages earned in the highest three of four immediately preceding work quarters. Claimants appealed to the Commonwealth Court, which consolidated the appeals and then reversed, concluding that the layoffs resulted in Claimants working less than a single completed period of thirteen weeks in the previous year and that the AWW was to be calculated pursuant to subsection 309(d.2), which authorizes a prospective calculation of AWW measured by multiplying the worker's hourly wage rate by his expected weekly work hours. For the reasons that follow, we agree with the WCJ and the WCAB that Section 309(d) controls, and that the periods of time during which Claimants received no wages because of periodic layoffs must be included in the computation of AWW. Accordingly, we reverse the Commonwealth Court.
Section 309, as amended in 1996, sets forth a scheme for computing "the average weekly wages of the employe." 77 P.S. § 582. Sections 309(a), (b) and (c) provide the method of c
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