Lost benefits because she can’t speak English

A rally was held to publicize the plight of a disabled Chinese immigrant, hurt on the job, who lost her worker’s compensation last March because she cannot speak English.
Ping Zhang Guan, 54, a Flushing resident who came to Queens from Cambodia with her 74-year-old husband and 14-year-old daughter five years ago, suffered serious injuries while legally working as an attendant for CPC Home Attendant Program Inc.
While working with the disabled and elderly, Guan suffered nerve damage to both her arms, a herniated disk and soft tissue damage to her knees and back in two separate incidents in October of 2002 and September of 2003.
She went to the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation, a wing of the Workers Compensation Board, who is responsible to find injured workers jobs and consequently train them. They issued a report they could do nothing to help, since she was disabled without an education and knowledge of the English language.
She was granted benefits of $326 dollars every two weeks by the Workers Compensation Board. But CNA Insurance appealed the decision a year and a half later, and the board ruled against Guan, saying, “the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation indicates that the primary obstacle in the claimant’s retraining are the claimant’s inability to communicate in English and the claimant’s subjective complaints, both of which are within the claimant’s control.”
“I can’t speak English,” Guan said through an interpreter. “I can’t get a job. I really don’t know what to do. I don’t understand, getting hurt at work and not speaking English, what’s the relationship.”
“Because of her lack of education, her lack of transferable skills, her lack of speaking English,” said Guan’s attorney Robert Saminsky, Esq. of Brecher-Fishman attorneys at law, “when you put it all together, you can’t re-train her.”
“The law is very clear: if you’re injured on the job, you are eligible for compensation from the State,” said John Cho, representing Councilman John Liu. “Whether you speak another language should not be an issue. … We are calling the Workers Compensation Board to reconsider their decision.”