Susan Collins's Early Workers' Comp Cuts Show a Long Record as an Ideologically Driven Servant of Business
Source: Branko Marcetic. "Susan Collins’s Record: Making Injured Workers’ Lives Harder." October 20, 2026. jacobin.com
The Gist
The author argues that Susan Collins's role in cutting Maine's workers' comp benefits 30 years ago shows she is not a true moderate but a longtime ally of business. She pushed cuts that hurt injured workers, ignored safety and evidence that the cuts wouldn't create jobs, and worked closely with insurers, even though the cuts didn't fix the system.
Conclusion
Susan Collins's leading role in Maine's 1987 and 1991 workers' compensation overhauls shows that she has long been an ideologically driven servant of the business sector, not a genuine moderate, and that she harmed injured workers.
Premises
- Collins was a leading figure (point person, top advisor, negotiator) in the McKernan administration's workers' comp reforms, and she campaigned on that record.
- The reforms cut benefits for injured workers by more than 40 percent, raised premiums, and expanded employers' power to deny claims, with the most seriously injured bearing the brunt.
- Collins dismissed or ignored evidence that Maine's high costs were driven by the nation's worst workplace safety record, and she insisted the problem was 'inflated benefits.'
- Her claim that the cuts would retain and promote good jobs was unsupported: experts, newspaper analyses, and a Chamber of Commerce survey found workers' comp costs were rarely a main reason for closures or layoffs.
- Collins openly worked in lockstep with the insurance and business lobbies, urging them to lobby legislators, using their exit threats (alleged to be a manufactured crisis) to pressure the legislature, and admitting her proposals paralleled the employer coalition's wish list.
- The cuts did not deliver the promised results, since insurers kept winning large rate hikes and critics said the insurance companies were the only ones who profited.
- Collins pursued the cuts at any cost, including a government shutdown, and she resisted alternatives such as a state-run insurance fund on ideological grounds.
Assumptions
- Collins's behavior in the late 1980s and early 1990s is representative of her enduring political orientation.
- Her motives were ideological and pro-business rather than a good-faith response to real cost problems.
- Critics' contemporaneous characterizations (the 'manufactured crisis,' 'no heart') are credible.
- Benefit cuts and reduced access to claims are harmful to workers, and the lack of demonstrated job or cost benefits makes them unjustified.
- Her pro-Trump voting record is evidence of a conservative orientation that conflicts with her moderate image.