A growing number of cities are secretly videotaping municipal employees on workers' compensation fixing roofs, shopping, lifting heavy objects and doing other things they claimed they couldn't do.
Pittsburgh hired private detectives last fall to tape employees suspected of faking injuries or occupational diseases.So far, the project has reduced the number of workers' compensation recipients, helped slow the escalating costs of the program and provided city Finance Director Ben Hayllar with more than a few good stories to tell.
In March, for instance, the city stopped paying compensation to a man who held down a second job delivering packages even though he claimed he couldn't return to his city job because of an injured back and leg. The city captured the unidentified man on tape delivering heavy objects.
"While we had him under surveillance, he started to get paranoid and was convinced he was being followed. So he called city police. The police investigated and discovered he was being watched - but by us," Hayllar said.
"They told him, `Hey, you are being followed, but the city's doing it.' "
Eventually, the man took himself off the workers' compensation rolls, said Bruce McKnight, Pittsburgh workers' compensation administrator.
The city hasn't been filing charges against the cheats but is using the evidence to get them back to work.
Pittsburgh's approach is not unusual, said John Moskal, vice president of Sedgwick James Inc., a company that administers workers' compensation programs for public and private employers across the nation. Moskal said the company also coordinates surveillance of suspected cheats.
About 299 of Pittsburgh's 5,400 employees receive workers' compensation, government-supervised insurance that pays medical bills and a percentage of salary to employees forced off their jobs. Before the surveillance, an average of 320 employees received it yearly, Hayllar said.