Work restrictions, and no job to go back to? Modified duty, the voucher and your job

The restrictions come from the doctor

Not from a supervisor, and not from the claims administrator.

A work restriction is a medical opinion about what your body can do: how much you can lift, how long you can stand, whether you can reach overhead, kneel, climb or drive. In a workers’ compensation case it comes from your treating physician, and in a dispute from a medical-legal evaluator. It does not come from a supervisor who thinks you look fine, or from an adjuster who has never seen you.

Specific, or it will be argued about. The restrictions that hold up are written in pounds, hours, positions, frequencies, surfaces and equipment. An illustrative “no lifting over 15 pounds, no more than 4 hours standing, no work above the shoulder” can be compared with a job. “Light duty” cannot. It is not a restriction at all: the employer reads it one way, you read it another, and nobody wrote anything down.

The doctor has to know the job. A release to “full duty” is often written against a job title rather than the actual work. Give the physician your real job description, in writing: the employer’s, if it has one, or your own.

A release is an opinion, and opinions can be revisited. If you were released to work you cannot do, ask the doctor to reconsider it against the actual duties. If that does not fix it, a medical-legal evaluation resolves a dispute about your work capacity.

Do not just quit. Resigning can complicate your temporary disabilityTD / TTD / TPD Temporary Disability, Total or Partial. Wage replacement while recovering. Two-thirds of average weekly earnings; 2026 maximum $1,764.11/week., the voucher and any claim about how you were treated. Report the problem in writing and let the record build.

They’re pressuring me to come back My doctor released me, but I can’t do the job

Modified work, before you are permanent and stationary

An offer that fits changes the check. One that does not, does not.

While you are still treating and not yet permanent and stationary, the question is temporary disability: the checks that replace part of your wages while you cannot work.

If modified work is available and you can do it, temporary disability generally stops, or converts to a partial payment. Temporary partial disability pays two-thirds of the difference between what you earned before the injury and what you earn now, up to the same weekly maximum, and its weeks count against the same 104-week limit. It is frequently not paid at all because nobody calculates it, so if you are back at reduced hours or reduced pay, check whether it is.

Two facts carry that rule. The work was actually offered, and it fits your restrictions. A restriction on a note does not by itself end the checks; an offer of work that fits it can. If either fact is wrong, say so in writing, specifically, and keep the doctor’s restrictions beside the offer.

If you try it and it does not work, document what happens. A documented failed attempt to return to work is among the most persuasive evidence there is, far stronger than a prediction that you could not have done it. Report any flare-up the same day, in writing, to the employer and to the doctor. An undocumented flare-up did not happen, as far as the record is concerned.

Workers’ comp checks stopped? Why they end, and what comes next Working while on comp

The offer that decides the voucher

Sixty days from the doctor’s report, on the state’s form.

Once your condition is permanent and stationary, a different question begins: whether your employer will offer you work you can do for the long term. For an injury on or after January 1, 2013, the answer decides the Supplemental Job Displacement Benefit, a $6,000 voucher for retraining.

The report that starts the clock. The trigger is the first report from the treating physician, an agreed medical evaluatorAME Agreed Medical Evaluator. A physician both sides agree on. Available only to represented workers, and practically very hard to move away from. or a qualified medical evaluatorQME Qualified Medical Evaluator. A state-certified physician who resolves disputes. Unrepresented workers get a panel of three by random draw. finding that your condition is permanent and stationary and that the injury caused permanent partial disability. The state’s form for it is the Physician’s Return-to-Work & Voucher Report, DWC-AD 10133.36, and it states your work capacities and activity restrictions: the description of you that any offer has to fit.

Sixty days from receipt. Your employer has until 60 days after the claims administrator receives that report to make a qualifying offer. The 60 days run from receipt, not from the date of the report or the permanent and stationary date. Later or supplemental reports do not restart the clock.

On the state’s form. The offer goes on form DWC-AD 10133.35, the Notice of Offer of Regular, Modified, or Alternative Work. The claims administrator may serve it on the employer’s behalf. The form asks for the job’s actual title, the wages, the work location, the duties, the shift, the physical requirements and the work restrictions, and it asks three questions with yes-or-no answers: whether the pay is the same as, or at least 85% of, your pay before the injury; whether the job will last at least 12 months; and whether it is a regular position required by the employer’s business.

When no offer is owed. If you lost no time from work, or went back to the same job you held at the time of injury for the same employer, you are treated as having been offered and having accepted regular work, and no voucher is owed.

When the 60 days pass with no qualifying offer, the claims administrator has to send you the voucher within 20 days.

What makes an offer qualifying

Within your restrictions, for a year, at fair pay, within reach of home.

An offer is not qualifying just because it arrived on time. It has to be real work you can do, and the rules say what that means.

• Within your restrictions. It has to fit the work capacities and activity restrictions the doctor described. An offer you physically cannot do is not a qualifying offer.
• At least 12 months. The offer has to be for work lasting at least 12 months. For a worker hired for seasonal work before the injury, seasonal periods can add up to the 12 months, if the hours and conditions are reasonably like the old job and the work starts within 12 months of the offer.
• At fair pay. The form asks whether the wages are the same as, or at least 85% of, what you earned before the injury.
• A regular position. The form asks whether the job is a regular position required by the employer’s business, not a post made up to end a benefit.
• Within a reasonable commute. The work has to be within a reasonable commuting distance of where you lived when you were hurt, unless you waive that. You are treated as having waived it if you accept the work and do not object to the location within 20 days after you are told you can. The same location and the same shift as your old job always satisfies it.
• On time. Made within 60 days after the claims administrator received the report.

A missing form is not always the end of the question. Where the doctor’s report itself contains enough to establish permanent partial disability and your work capacities, the voucher can still be owed. And “it would have been impossible to employ this worker” is not a defense. The rules require a good-faith offer that complies with them, or the voucher.

An offer you physically cannot do is not a qualifying offer.

Saying yes, saying no

Answer in writing, inside the 30 days.

The offer form tells you how long you have: 30 calendar days from receipt to accept or reject it. If you do not answer within 30 days, the offer is treated as rejected.

What rejecting costs. The form spells out the consequence. If you reject the offer, or do not respond in 30 days, you will not be entitled to the voucher, unless the offer was for modified or alternative work and it fails the test: you cannot perform the essential functions of the job, it is not a regular position lasting at least 12 months, it pays less than 85% of your pay before the injury, or it is beyond a reasonable commuting distance. Put plainly, turning down a real offer that fits costs you the voucher. Turning down an offer that does not fit does not, but you will want the reason on paper.

If it fits, try it, and document what happens. Keep a short log: the date, the task, what happened, who you told.

If it does not fit, say why, specifically. “The offer requires lifting 40 pounds; my restriction is 15” is an answer. “I can’t do it” is not. The form has a line for why you cannot accept. Use it, and keep a copy of everything you send.

If the doctor’s restrictions are wrong, fix them first. An offer measured against restrictions that understate your limits can qualify on paper, which is why the restrictions come before the answer.

Pressure is not an offer. A supervisor’s text telling you to come in, or a vague “we’ll find something,” is not an offer on the state’s form. Keep it anyway. Pressure to work outside your restrictions, where the employer knows the risk, can be the kind of misconduct that adds half again to compensation, on a deadline of its own.

The employer’s serious and willful misconduct

What a qualifying offer is worth

$6,000, and the $5,000 behind it.

An offer of work decides two benefits worth $11,000 together.

The voucher. The Supplemental Job Displacement Benefit is a non-transferable voucher worth up to $6,000, whatever your permanent disabilityPD Permanent Disability. Compensation for lasting impairment. A different and much lower weekly rate — 2026 maximum $290/week. rating. It pays for retraining at a California public school or a provider on the state’s Eligible Training Provider List, and for licensing and certification fees, with sub-limits of $600 for placement or vocational counseling and $1,000 for computer equipment. Of it, $500 is for miscellaneous expenses with no receipts, payable on request. Most workers never ask for it.

When it expires. Two years from the date it is furnished to you, or five years from the date of injuryDate of injury For a cumulative or occupational disease claim, the law sets it as when you first suffered disability and knew or should have known it was work-related — not when the wear began. Almost every deadline runs off this., whichever is later. Expenses have to be both incurred and submitted before that date. A program that runs past it does not preserve the part after it.

It cannot be cashed out. For an injury on or after January 1, 2013, settlement or commutationCommutation Paying future benefits as a present lump sum. of the voucher is not permitted.

The supplement. The Return-to-Work Supplement Program pays a one-time $5,000 to workers whose earnings loss is out of proportion to their rating. The only door to it is the voucher: no voucher, no supplement. The $5,000 is set by the state’s Administrative Director, not written into the Labor Code.

The deadline nobody sends. The supplement has to be applied for within one year from the date the voucher was served on you. Not from the injury, not from a settlement, not from when you spend the voucher. The application is electronic only, and an application missing the voucher or its required details can be denied while the year runs.

The old 15% adjustment is gone. For injuries on or after January 1, 2013, an offer of work no longer raises or lowers permanent disability payments by 15%.

The $6,000 voucher and the $5,000 supplement

A claim is not a job

The comp case pays benefits. It does not hold the position.

The most expensive misunderstanding in this area is “I’m on workers’ comp, so they can’t fire me.” A workers’ compensation claim pays for medical treatment, wage replacement and permanent disability. By itself it does not guarantee you a job, a leave of absence, an accommodation or reinstatement.

What the comp law does forbid is treating you worse because you filed a claim, said you would, or testified in someone else’s case. Proved, it brings compensation increased by one-half, capped at $10,000, up to $250 in costs, reinstatement and lost wages, on a petition to the Appeals Board within one year.

What it does not forbid is more than most people expect. In Department of Rehabilitation v. WCABWCAB Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board. The court system that decides these cases. 23 district offices statewide. (Lauher), decided by the California Supreme Court in 2003, a worker who had to use his sick and vacation leave for treatment of a work injury lost his discrimination claim, because every employee, injured at work or not, had to use leave the same way. The question the Court asked was whether he was singled out for worse treatment because the injury was industrial. In Gelson’s Markets v. WCAB, decided by the Court of Appeal in 2009, an award was annulled because the worker showed harm but no evidence that a comparable employee who was not injured at work would have been treated any better.

Stated plainly: after Lauher, a neutral policy applied to everyone is the employer’s strongest defense. An employer that ends the employment of every worker who exhausts a fixed leave, injured or not, will usually defeat this claim, even when the work caused the leave. The claim is won with comparisons and documents: who else took leave, what the handbook says, whether the policy was applied to anyone else this way.

What an employer can still do. Eliminate a position in a genuine reduction in force, end the employment for reasons that have nothing to do with the injury, and decline to create a job that does not exist, but not skip the interactive process described in the next section.

Afraid to report a work injury? What the law protects Retaliation and termination

Where the job protection is

Accommodation, the interactive process, and leave.

The law that most often protects an injured worker’s job is not in the workers’ compensation code. It is California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act, which applies to employers with five or more employees, and the family and medical leave laws.

Reasonable accommodation. A work injury can be a disability under FEHA, including a temporary one. The employer has to reasonably accommodate a known disability. That can mean modified duties, a changed schedule, equipment, reassignment to a vacant position, or a finite leave of absence where it is likely you will be able to do the essential duties of the job at the end of it. An indefinite leave is not required.

The interactive process. The employer also has to engage in a timely, good-faith conversation with you about what accommodation would work. Failing to do that is its own violation, separate from failing to accommodate, and employers lose on it because they skip the conversation. The process is triggered by a request, so ask for accommodation in writing, use the word, and attach the restrictions.

The remedies are larger. FEHA provides emotional distress damages, punitive damages and attorney’s fees, against the comp remedy’s $10,000 cap. In City of Moorpark v. Superior Court, decided by the California Supreme Court in 1998, the Court held that the comp remedy is not the only one: FEHA and common law claims remain available. In Kaur v. Foster Poultry Farms, decided by the Court of Appeal in 2022, losing the comp discrimination claim at the Appeals Board did not bar a civil FEHA case.

Leave. The California Family Rights Act and the federal Family and Medical Leave Act provide job-protected leave, with group health coverage continued, for workers and employers who qualify. That leave can run at the same time as your time off for the work injury.

Different clocks. A FEHA claim begins with a complaint to the Civil Rights Department, on deadlines that are not workers’ compensation deadlines, and nobody in the comp system tracks them for you. A workers’ compensation attorney should tell you when to talk to an employment lawyer. This office does.

Return to work and job protection Can I be fired while on workers’ comp?

When there is no going back

The voucher is one answer. It is not the only one.

Sometimes the honest conclusion is that you cannot do your old work again, with or without accommodation. Three things follow from that, and many workers claim only the first.

The voucher. If no qualifying offer came, the $6,000 voucher and the $5,000 supplement behind it, on the clocks above.

The rating. Some injuries end a trade at a modest percentage. A commercial driver who loses a medical certification, or a nurse who can no longer transfer patients, may carry a small impairment rating and a total loss of the work. That gap is where vocational evidence matters more than the percentage does.

The route to 100%. If your restrictions keep you from competing in the open labor market at all, the scheduled rating can be rebutted, and permanent total disabilityPTD Permanent Total Disability. 100%. Paid at the temporary disability rate for life. pays for life. It needs medical evidence that the restrictions are entirely industrial, and that apportionmentApportionment Dividing permanent disability between industrial and non-industrial causes. It is to disability, not to findings on an image. question has to be won by the doctors before a vocational expert can help. Specific restrictions and a documented attempt to go back are what both depend on.

I can’t go back to my old job Permanent total disability

What to keep, starting now

The file that answers every question above.

Most disputes here are decided on paper: what the doctor wrote, what the employer offered, and when each arrived.

• The restrictions — Every work status report, with its date, and the job description you gave the doctor.
• The return-to-work and voucher report — The doctor’s report finding you permanent and stationary, and the date the claims administrator received it, which starts the 60 days.
• Any offer of work — The form itself, with its job title, duties, wages, location, shift and dates, and the date you received it, which starts your 30.
• Your answer — A copy of what you sent, with its date, and the specific reason if you rejected it.
• A log of any return — The date, the task, what happened and who you told, for every day you tried modified work.
• Your requests for accommodation — Each one, dated, and any reply.
• The voucher, if one came — Its proof of service date, and that date one year on.

When you do not need a lawyer for this

Sometimes the offer is fair and the job is fine.

Not every offer of work is a problem. If your employer offers modified work that fits the restrictions on paper and in practice, at your pay, near home, and you want to go back, accept it; many workers are best served by exactly that. If you went back to your own job and lost no time, there is no voucher question. If a voucher arrived, you can use it and apply for the supplement yourself. The state’s Information and Assistance officers answer questions about a claim at no cost, including how an offer was made and what a deadline means.

A consultation is worth having when the offer does not match the restrictions, when it arrived late or not on the state’s form, when you were told to stay home with no work and no checks, when you have been let go or pushed toward quitting after a claim, or when you suspect you cannot do any work at all. Those questions turn on dates and documents, and on deadlines outside the comp system that nobody will flag for you. A consultation with this office costs nothing, and if there is nothing worth doing, we will tell you that.

When you don’t need a lawyer, and what changes the answer