If a Workers’ Compensation Law Judge has directed you to show attachment to the labor market, this page is the practical answer to what that means and what you actually have to do.

It happens when you have been found less than totally disabled from your work injury. At that point the Board expects you to be making active efforts to find suitable work within your medical restrictions, and your loss-of-wage benefits depend on showing it.

What follows is the same guidance this office gives its own clients when a judge makes that direction. For the background on why attachment is required at all and when it is not, see our page on labor market attachment.

What the judge is actually asking for

Attachment is shown by credible documentary evidence that you are actively seeking work. Two words in that sentence do the work.

Documentary. Not your testimony that you have been looking. Paper, or its electronic equivalent, created as you go.

Credible. A list of twenty employers written out the night before a hearing does not look the same as contemporaneous records with dates, names, phone numbers and responses. Carriers and judges have seen both.

Build the record as it happens. That single habit is the difference between most attachment problems and no attachment problem.

The five ways to show it

You can demonstrate attachment through one or more of the following. You do not have to do all of them.

  1. An independent job search that is timely, diligent and persistent.
  2. Active participation in a job-location service — New York State Department of Labor re-employment services, a One-Stop Career Center, or a job service commonly used to find work in your particular industry.
  3. Active participation in vocational rehabilitation through ACCES-VR (Adult Career and Continuing Education Services — Vocational Rehabilitation) or another Board-approved rehabilitation program.
  4. Active participation in a job-retraining program.
  5. Full-time attendance at an accredited educational institution, pursuing employment within your work restrictions.

Whichever you choose, the same principle applies: participation has to be active, and it has to be documented.

What an independent job search has to contain

An independent job search means you are searching and applying on your own — in person, by telephone, by email, or on the web.

If the contact was in person, your record should show, at a minimum:

  • The day, month and year of the contact
  • The name and address of the employer
  • The name and telephone number of the person you spoke with about potential employment
  • The type of job you were seeking
  • The response of the potential employer

If the contact was written, keep the document itself: a copy of the resume you submitted, the inquiry letter or email, or the completed application. Along with it, record the day, month and year submitted, the nature of the employment sought, the name and address of the employer, and the response.

Notice that the response is part of the record in both cases. A rejection is evidence. No answer at all is evidence. Keep them.

Applying online

Most hiring now runs through employer websites and job boards, and the Board recognizes that.

When you apply through one of those sites and receive a confirmation email or a reference number, that is your documentation. Record it. Those confirmation numbers are the online equivalent of the name and phone number you would have written down after walking into a shop, and they are the cleanest proof an online search generates.

Do not delete the confirmation emails. Make a folder and let them accumulate.

The two forms

The Board has forms built for exactly this, and using them is simpler than inventing your own format.

Form C-258, the Claimant’s Record of Job Search Efforts and Contacts, is the broader one. It has sections for Department of Labor services such as a One-Stop or Workforce1 center, for ACCES-VR and other rehabilitation or job-retraining programs including SUNY Educational Opportunity Centers, and for full-time educational enrollment. It asks for dates, the name of the program, addresses, your counselor’s name and telephone number, what you actually did, and the result. It also asks you to attach supporting proof — enrollment records, certificates, written verification from the agencies you visited.

Form C-258.1 is the running log of an independent job search. Each page gives you four spaces, each one recording the date of contact, the method of contact, the employer name and contact information, and the electronic confirmation number where there is one. If you contacted more than four employers — and you should have — add sheets or print more copies. Fill in the period of time the search covers in the space at the top.

Both forms are on the Board’s website. This office will send you the current links when a judge makes the direction in your case, so you are working from the current version rather than something saved years ago.

What “active participation” means at a career center

Registering somewhere and never going back is not participation, and this is where people most often come up short.

The standard applied to a Workforce1 Career Center is a useful illustration of what is expected: calling for an appointment, attending an orientation session, meeting with a counselor to develop a resume, registering that resume in the system, maintaining contact with the center to find out whether there were any job matches, and following up on all job referrals and matches.

That is a sequence, not a single visit. The follow-up at the end of it is the part that gets skipped and the part that gets noticed.

This office recommends Workforce1 for searching within your medical restrictions. The services cost nothing. On Staten Island the center is at 120 Stuyvesant Place, third floor. In Brooklyn there is a center at 9 Bond Street, one in East New York on Atlantic Avenue, and an industrial and transportation center at the Brooklyn Army Terminal.

The rule people get backwards

Worth stating plainly, because it cuts both ways.

You are not required to accept a new job in order to remain attached to the labor market. The obligation is to search.

But if you do find employment within your medical restrictions, you must accept it. You cannot conduct a documented search, receive a suitable offer, and turn it down while continuing to collect lost-wage benefits on the theory that you are still looking.

Frequently asked questions

How many employers do I need to contact?

There is no magic number in the statute. The standard is timely, diligent and persistent, which is judged on the whole picture rather than a count. A handful of contacts spread over several months tends not to survive that description. A steady, documented effort does.

Do I have to look for work outside my old trade?

The search has to be within your medical restrictions, which for many people means work different from what they did before. If your restrictions rule out the only job you have ever held, that is a reason to look at vocational rehabilitation or retraining, which count as attachment in their own right.

What if nobody will hire me?

Attachment is about the effort, not the result. Rejections are not failures for this purpose — they are documentation. What hurts a case is a gap in the record, not a series of employers who said no.

I already got the direction weeks ago and have not started. Is it too late?

Start now and tell this office. Beginning late is a problem worth addressing; continuing not to start is a larger one. The sooner the record begins, the more there is to show.

Can I just keep my own list instead of using the forms?

You can, as long as it contains everything the Board asks for. The advantage of the forms is that they prompt you for each required item, so nothing gets left out and the record arrives in a format the judge already knows how to read.

What should I send to your office, and when?

Send the forms and backup as you go rather than saving it all for the week of the hearing. That way any gap can be fixed while there is still time to fix it.

Talk to us

If a judge has directed you to show attachment and you are not sure where to start, call the office. If you are already a client, send what you have and we will tell you what is missing before it matters.

Consultations are free. In a workers’ compensation case there is nothing to pay up front — the fee is applied for and approved by the Workers’ Compensation Board out of the award.

The information on this page is general and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.

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