Georgia: School Custodian’s AWW Based On Actual Earning, Not Lesser Amount He Received Because of Wage Pro-Ration Over 12-Month Period

Where a school custodian worked a school-year schedule of 220 days, but his pay was pro-rated and spread over a full calendar year, in order that he not have pay gaps over the course of the year, his average weekly wage should be computed based upon the $334.03 gross weekly wages he earned during the 13-weeks preceding his injury (i.e., 40 hours each week times his hourly rate of $9.20) [see OCGA § 34-9-260 (1)]; his AWW should not be reduced by the amount that was withheld and later paid on a pro-rated basis over 12 months, held a Georgia appellate court. The court stressed that It would defy logic to say that the custodian had not earned his contractual rate of pay once he had actually performed the work for which he was being paid — regardless of when that pay was received. Deprivation of future earnings is to be measured by the worker's earning capacity. Here, he was actually earning $334.03 per week when the injury occurred.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Ware County Board of Education v. Taft, 2019 Ga. App. LEXIS 370 (June 24, 2019)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 93.01.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law