Violette: NY Exercise Riders Still Covered
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The head of the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association said a move to drop exercise riders from workers' compensation insurance coverage from the New York Jockey Injury Compensation Fund will only be temporary as a broader, longer term insurance solution is devised.
The Blood-Horse reported this week that legislation is being considered in both the Senate and Assembly in New York to mandate that the compensation fund provide workers' compensation coverage solely for jockeys and apprentice jockeys, leaving exercise riders out of the system for the first time since 1990.
PRECIOUS: NY Bill Could End Exercise Riders' Insurance
But Richard Violette Jr., president of the NYTHA, said all exercise riders will still be covered for workers' compensation insurance protections except that they will be on the insurance tab of owners and trainers instead of the fund's program. He said those in the industry with safer workplaces should see lower workers' compensation charges than those with a higher number of accidents that involve injuries of employees.
Violette said the temporary move is being driven by dramatically rising costs of the program. "We need a little breathing room,'' he said.
"There needs to be an overall fix and we're working feverishly to try to come up with a program to cover jockeys, exercise riders, and also backstretch workers,'' Violette added.
Violette said exercise riders total about two-thirds of the insurance program's costs, and those costs have skyrocketed. In two years, the program's expenses went from $3 milllion to $7 million, and they are expected to jump again to $8 million in the coming year.
The injury compensation program gets its funding from several sources, including an initial $1,500 payment by owners and trainers at NYRA tracks and Finger Lakes; that fee had been $900 the previous year. Also, 2% comes off the top of purse payments to go to the program and there is a daily per stall charge—which has gone from 95 cents to $1.50—that goes to the injury protection fund.
Violette said owners and trainers will have to pay more to cover exercise riders if the legislation passes, but that they will also see charges lowered that they now make to cover the fund's insurance program.
Violette said the program's rising costs are due to premium hikes and such mandated changes as a recent doubling of the daily stipends paid out to injured employees unable to work.
"It's literally stopping people from racing in New York,'' Violette said of the program's costs.
Violette said shifting of the exercise riders' coverage shouldn't last longer than a year or so while officials work to devise a new system of insurance coverage.
"We need this in place so we don't have to again swallow an unacceptable plan going into 2016,'' he said.