CHARLESTON — Consider an aging worker suddenly hurt on the job and forced to take early retirement.

Within a few years, the worker turns 70, the cutoff stage for workers’ compensation benefits.

Even though pain is a constant companion and the disability prevents part-time employment, the worker no longer is compensated for the injury that took him out of the workplace.

Two southern lawmakers — Delegates Tom Louisos, D-Fayette, and Greg Butcher, D-Logan — see the setup as unfair and want to go back to the old way of taking care of West Virginia’s workers.

“They didn’t ask to be hurt in the workplace,” Butcher said.

“I think society owes them a debt.

Butcher and Louisos are co-sponsoring legislation that would reverse the Legislature’s decision a few years ago that automatically ends benefits at age 70.

The shutoff was part of a massive reform bill the Legislature enacted as a cost-cutting device, paving the way for the eventual end of the state-run system and the creation of privately owned BrickStreet.

Louisos and Butcher each voted against the age 70 threshold.

Their measure would restore lifetime benefits, imposing no age at which they are denied.

“When this was put in place, it didn’t affect that many people,” Louisos said.

“Now there are many folks out there 70 years old and getting ready to lose their workers’ compensation. Getting a job at that age would be very difficult.”

Louisos said the Legislature was eyeing any means of paring down costs of the state-run system.

“They took advantage of folks that needed help,” he said.

Louisos pointed to an annual report last week showing BrickStreet managed a $113.6 million profit in 2008.

“And this at a time we’re telling folks out there we’re reducing their benefits,” the veteran lawmaker said.

“They’re really going to need that. It’s like health care. When you’re older, you really need it.”

Butcher pointed to West Virginia’s aging population and noted people live longer today than in previous generations.

“And the cost of living is higher,” he said. “You’re on a fixed income with Social Security or whatever. It’s going to take every dime those people have for utilities, transportation, food, medicine. The list goes on. Hopefully, they live to be 100.”

Louisos and Butcher say many of their constituents have pleaded with them to end the shutoff date, restoring benefits as a lifetime compensation under the original plan.

“All of us were skeptical of that,” Butcher said of the reform bill that ended benefits at 70.

“But the majority of the leadership and the governor at the time thought BrickStreet would be a better answer to get them out of the workers’ compensation business.”

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com