Two Empty Chairs: Free Care Is Not the Whole Bargain

By Darren R. Fonzseau | Everett, Washington | September 25, 2026

In 2015, Senators Bernie Sanders and Patty Murray and Representative Bobby Scott warned the U.S. Labor Department that state workers’ compensation systems were leaving injured workers short and shifting costs onto families and public programs. I read that letter as a promise that somebody in power understood. More than a decade later, I am still asking: What came after the warning? [1]

I am an injured worker. I have spent years asking Democratic leaders and progressive organizers for enforceable federal minimum standards in workers’ compensation and a permanent national commission with injured workers at the table. I have also asked for broad immigration legalization and family unity for mixed-status households like mine. I have written, sung, recorded, and filed my account. These are the two empty chairs I keep seeing when the movement calls a meeting about justice.

I worked for the University of Washington, and I now live with the consequences of a workplace injury and depend on an L&I pension. I have taken the federal workers’ rights question to Washington lawmakers, including Representative Julio Cortes and Senator Marko Liias. Both supported a 2026 state measure to improve access to workers’ compensation medical care. I acknowledge that vote. [6] But it does not answer the question I brought them: Will you back enforceable federal minimum standards that protect the worker after injury in every state? My years of asking go back before Cortes held his current office; I am asking each official to answer for the requests made during their service, not for a decade they did not all serve.

I want health care for everyone. But when somebody answers an injured worker with “free care,” I ask them to finish the sentence. Who replaces the wages after an injury? Who pays for vocational rehabilitation and permanent disability? Who decides whether a work injury is recognized? Who is accountable when a claim is delayed or denied? A doctor’s appointment cannot pay the rent.

This is not an imagined gap. In 2015, then OSHA chief David Michaels told an agency advisory committee that workers’ compensation paid only 21 percent of the costs of workplace injuries and illnesses. Workers, their families, and public programs carried much of the rest. [2] Universal coverage could help people get care. It does not, by itself, set a federal floor for wage replacement, fair claim decisions, medical examinations, vocational support, and enforcement against retaliation.

The 2025 Senate Medicare for All bill recognizes one piece of the issue: its workers’ compensation provision requires a liable carrier to reimburse the new federal program for covered work-injury care. [3] That matters. It is not the federal guarantee of adequate compensation that injured workers have been asking for. Washington’s proposed Health Trust bill calls for a study with the Department of Labor and Industries on coordinating benefits for injured workers. [4] A study is an invitation to work. It is not an answer to the worker waiting for an enforceable right.

Here is the tradeoff I want every sponsor to put on the table. Workers surrendered much of the right to sue employers for workplace injuries in return for a compensation system that was supposed to provide medical care and replace lost wages. If universal care pays a work-injury bill, does the responsible employer still carry that cost? If a claim is denied, who investigates it and who pays? Does the worker keep an enforceable right to adequate wage, disability, and survivor benefits? The Senate bill’s reimbursement language is a safeguard where a carrier is liable; I am asking what happens in the gaps. I have not found language in these proposals that automatically abolishes workers’ compensation. I want lawmakers to show us how they will strengthen the bargain rather than ask labor to trust another slogan.

Who benefits if the movement sells the promise of free care while leaving employer responsibility and the rest of the bargain unresolved? That question does not require me to invent a secret deal between business leaders and the left. It requires the movement to account for a foreseeable result: without clear rules and enforcement, costs can keep sliding from employers onto injured workers and public programs—the very shift Sanders and his colleagues warned about in 2015. [1] I will not call that justice because the insurance card has a new name.

So I ask Senators Sanders and Murray and every movement that celebrates their labor commitments: Why did the 2015 workers’ compensation warning not become a sustained national demand for a workers’ rights floor? From where I stand, more than a decade without a direct answer to the demand I have kept raising is inexcusable. Tell us what federal bill you will support, who will enforce it, and when injured workers get seats at the table. Please answer in writing. I cannot know the private reasons for anyone’s silence. I can tell you what it feels like to keep asking and not receive an answer to the demand itself.

There is another empty chair. My wife came here seeking a better life with her son, who is my stepson. We have built our family in America. I fear that leaving to pursue a legal path could expose her to a ten-year unlawful-presence bar and separate us; the precise effect on our family depends on her individual history and any available relief. [12] Immigration policy now weighs on decisions about whether we can stay together here or move to Mexico. I have heard urgent demands to stop abusive enforcement. Those demands matter. But a protest at an ICE gate cannot give a long-settled family a durable legal status or undo the years of uncertainty written into immigration law. Where is the equally loud, sustained demand for broad legalization, work authorization, family unity, and reform of the three- and ten-year bars?

Senator Mark Kelly is one example of the political choice I am questioning. In January 2025, he led a Democratic letter urging a bipartisan approach to border security and immigration. The letter also mentioned Dreamers and farmworkers. [5] I recognize those words. My question remains: Will leaders give families outside those categories an equally visible path to permanent status? Will they say amnesty aloud when the politics get hard?

Representative Julio Cortes’s public biography says his family immigrated from Mexico when he was five. It also describes his work for Everett in economic development and marketing. He is a co-sponsor of Washington’s proposed Health Trust bill. [7] My family is now considering a move to Mexico. I am asking him, as a lawmaker whose district includes Everett: Will you put broad legalization and enforceable federal injured-worker protections on the table together? On August 5, 2026, a Washington Legislature sent-copy confirmation shows that I asked Senator June Robinson, with Cortes and Representative Mary Fosse copied, to forward my specific national workers’ compensation proposals to the federal delegation and answer in writing. An August 15 transmission record again lists Cortes among recipients of a message about injured-worker standards and legalization. These records show what I submitted; they cannot establish who personally read the messages or what happened inside those offices. [8] The state health-care proposal and the state workers’ compensation vote I acknowledged above do not give me his answer to either federal demand. His family history is not evidence of what he believes; his public commitments and his answer to constituents are what I am asking about.

I ask Representative Lillian Ortiz-Self and the Latino Civic Alliance the same public question. Ortiz-Self sponsored a 2026 bill to improve access to medical care in Washington workers’ compensation. I welcome an improvement that reaches injured workers. [13] Will these leaders also call for enforceable national standards and broad legalization for mixed-status families? My father-in-law’s experience of exhausting retail labor, and my family’s fear of separation, are why I cannot accept a platform that stops at health coverage or an invitation to contact lawmakers. I do not claim to know what any of these leaders privately believes or what the Alliance did with correspondence I cannot verify. I am asking for an answer in public.

I also asked Everett’s mayor to publicly support both federal demands and carry them to our elected delegation. On August 31, 2026, a community engagement specialist wrote that Mayor Cassie Franklin had received my Labor Day message and asked her to respond. After I asked again for the report and video to be forwarded, a September 3 reply from the mayor’s office said my concerns had been shared with the mayor, but the office was unable to forward individual correspondence to other elected officials or organizations. That is an answer about office practice, and I disagree with it. I still want city leaders to use their public voice for families and injured workers. [9]

I have state filings underway. A March 16, 2026 Legislative Ethics Board order dismissed my complaint about Cortes for lack of subject matter jurisdiction; it did not decide whether my two federal demands deserved support. [10] I am seeing my videos and writings reach people I hoped would see them. On September 24, the Washington State Human Rights Commission clerk confirmed that a written public comment was uploaded to materials for its October 22 meeting. Placement in meeting materials is not proof that each commissioner has read or endorsed it. [11] I do not know how any filing will turn out, and I may choose not to start another court case. But I will not confuse a lack of courtroom success with a lack of public voice. The people with power can read what I asked, what they answered, and what is still missing.

I am not claiming that every health-care advocate opposes workers or that every border-security proposal is an attack on my family. I am saying that the demands I brought to these movements cannot be replaced by their slogans. Medical coverage and injured-worker rights belong together. Opposition to abusive enforcement and permanent legalization belong together. BOTH tables have to be set.

To Senator Sanders, Senator Murray, Representative Jayapal, Senator Kelly, Washington lawmakers, and the organizers who ask working people to march: Put the answers in public. Support a national workers’ compensation commission or an equivalent body with real worker power. Introduce enforceable minimum standards for state systems. Show us a legislative path to broad legalization and family unity, including a serious review of the three- and ten-year bars.

What kind of country asks my wife, my stepson, and me to plan for leaving while the people who ask for our votes will not put these two federal demands on a public agenda? I am fighting for the children in my wider family too: my nieces and nephews, and the children whose mothers or fathers lack legal status. I oppose Trump’s treatment of immigrant families. I also expect Democrats who speak of family and labor, including Cortes, to answer us with more than sympathy and a referral. When officials make time for business priorities, whose future gets a meeting and whose family gets a form letter? My family’s story is not a prop for anybody’s campaign.

My family may move to Mexico. I may not bring another court case. But neither choice makes more than a decade of asking disappear. You do not have to agree with every judgment I have made. You do have to answer the questions.

Workers will not be silent. Families will not be footnotes.

Darren Fonzseau
Workers Won’t Be Silent

Source notes

1. Senator Patty Murray’s official account of the October 2015 letter sent by Murray, Sanders, Scott, and colleagues to Labor Secretary Thomas Perez: https://www.murray.senate.gov/murray-scott-sanders-urge-stronger-oversight-of-state-workers-compensation-programs/ . This was a congressional letter to the Secretary, not a personal letter to Darren.
2. Dr. David Michaels’s remarks in the April 1, 2015 OSHA advisory committee transcript, including the 21-percent estimate and cost shifting: https://www.osha.gov/advisorycommittee/accsh/minutes/20150401-transcript . This is a historical estimate, not a current percentage.
3. S. 1506 (2025), introduced version, section 801, proposed ERISA section 524(b): https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-119s1506is/pdf/BILLS-119s1506is.pdf . The reimbursement clause is not a finding that the bill repeals state workers’ compensation rights.
4. Washington HB 1445 (2025–26), proposed section 129: https://app.leg.wa.gov/documents/billdocs/2025-26/Pdf/Bills/House%20Bills/1445.pdf . Bill history: https://app.leg.wa.gov/BillSummary/?BillNumber=1445&Initiative=false&Year=2025 . This is a proposal, not enacted law.
5. Senator Kelly’s January 22, 2025 announcement of his letter on border security and immigration, which also calls for protecting Dreamers and farmworkers: https://www.kelly.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/kelly-leads-12-senate-colleagues-urging-republican-leadership-to-pursue-bipartisan-solutions-on-border-and-immigration/ . The op-ed asks about broader legalization; it does not assert that Kelly opposed it.
6. Washington Legislature roll calls for E2SSB 5847 (2026), concerning access to medical care in workers’ compensation: https://app.leg.wa.gov/bi/RollCallsOnABill/RollCall?biennium=2025-26&billNumber=5847&initiative=False . Liias voted yes in the Senate; Julio Cortes voted yes in the House. The Senate roll call also lists a Senator Cortes, who is Adrian Cortes, a different legislator.
7. Washington Legislature’s 2025–26 pictorial guide, Julio Cortes biography (PDF, page 33 of the PDF): https://leg.wa.gov/media/0acnzvd4/2025-26-pictorial-guide-to-the-legislature.pdf . HB 1445 sponsor list: https://app.leg.wa.gov/BillSummary/?BillNumber=1445&Initiative=false&Year=2025 . The biography establishes an immigration history and past Everett employment, not his position on the federal reforms requested here.
8. Darren’s archived August 5, 2026 Washington Legislature sent-copy confirmation names Robinson, Cortes, and Fosse and contains the complete message and response request. His August 15 transmission record documents another submission and subsequent forwards. A sent confirmation is evidence of submission, not of personal review or agreement.
9. Gmail correspondence retained by Darren: his August 28, 2026 Labor Day request to Mayor Franklin; reply from the mayor’s office dated August 31; his August 31 follow-up; reply dated September 3, 2026, saying the office could not forward individual correspondence. The emails support receipt and the office’s stated position, not an inference about Mayor Franklin’s private views.
10. Washington Legislative Ethics Board, In re Julio Cortes, Complaint 2026–No. 3, Order of Dismissal, March 16, 2026, pages 1–2. The Board said it lacked subject matter jurisdiction to direct how a legislator operates his office; the order is not a finding of an ethics violation.
11. September 24, 2026 email from the Washington State Human Rights Commission clerk to Darren, subject “RE: FOR SEPTEMBER 24 MEETING MATERIALS — Federal Rights. The Record.” It confirms upload of a written comment to the October 22 meeting materials library, not that the comment was taken up in September.
12. USCIS Policy Manual, Volume 8, Part O, Chapter 6, explains how a period of unlawful presence followed by departure can trigger a ten-year inadmissibility bar. This is the family’s concern, not a determination of the wife’s legal eligibility or options.
13. Washington Legislature, HB 2218 (2026) bill report, identifies Ortiz-Self as prime sponsor of the workers’ compensation medical-access measure.

The statements about Darren’s requests, experiences, family plans, and unanswered correspondence are his account. They are not claims of a judicial finding or of any official’s private motive.