We think we live in paradise but for hundreds of injured workers, final hearing backlogs at labor agencies make them nothing more than "hostages in paradise." I do like the people who work for the Department of Labor and the Labor Appeals’ Board —but that doesn’t excuse the incredible financial hardship caused by their slow claim processing.

Say that you had an accident at work — fractured your hand, wrist, arm, back, leg or foot — and it took you months to receive proper treatment, surgery, physical therapy and eventually to get back to work. During the months you were off, you received only 66 percent of your prior salary and probably had your health benefits canceled by your employer. By the time you get back to work you are broke, your credit cards are overdrawn, bill collectors are hounding you, your mortgage or rent payments are seriously in arrears. In other words you, your spouse and family are under major financial pressure and you need some money quickly.

If you were seriously injured, you are entitled to final monetary benefits because of permanent impairment to your body (motion losses, nerve losses, strength losses, etc.). These final benefit payments can range from $5,000 to $40,000 (or more) — sums that could greatly ease your financial burdens.

But the bad news is that due to final hearing backlogs at the Labor Department, you cannot get the insurance company to pay your final benefits. That’s right — even though your family needs that final money, you cannot get it because the Labor Department claims it does not have enough staff to hold final hearings. And without a final hearing there is no final order telling the insurance company to pay the money that is owed you.

Due to this very same final hearing backlog, insurance carriers now realize they can leave your money in their bank accounts gathering interest for them, rather than simply agreeing to a fair settlement with you and avoiding the need for any final hearing. This results in even more cases needing a final hearing and further backlog keeping injured workers from their final money.

The hearing backlog is no better at the Labor Appeals’ Board (LAB), which is supposed to correct any erroneous decisions made by the Department of Labor. In fact, LAB final hearing delays are even worse because it takes almost three years to generate final written decisions (one year to get you to a hearing, then two more years while LAB officials write up the decision made at the conclusion of the hearing two years earlier).

None of these hardships being inflicted on our injured workers should be allowed to continue. Of course, the Legislature could give those departments more staff but times are tough and that is unlikely for now. So help must come from within those agencies.

Thankfully, there’s talk that the Department of Labor’s new director is about to attempt to unclog this final hearing backlog by simplifying the hearings. He should be encouraged to do so immediately and applauded if he accomplishes that goal. And in attempting to get final hearings completed faster, the director — and the LAB — should take advantage of the many suggestions offered by the attorneys of injured worker attorneys and insurance carriers to speed up the hearing process. Those ideas will streamline final claims processing and will get final benefit checks into the pockets of badly injured workers in a timely manner.

Freeing Hawaii’s injured worker hostages is possible. Let’s do it.