DBA Vocational Rehabilitation: When You Can’t Return to Contractor Work

If a Defense Base Act injury keeps you from returning to the kind of overseas contractor work you did before, you may qualify for vocational rehabilitation benefits. These benefits can include skills testing, training programs, job-placement help, and continued wage benefits while you retrain — paid through the U.S. Department of Labor under federal law. Friedman, Rodman & Frank has represented injured overseas contractors in DBA claims since 1976, including disputes over vocational rehabilitation and loss of earning capacity.

What DBA Vocational Rehabilitation Covers

Vocational rehabilitation is authorized by 33 U.S.C. § 939(c), and the implementing regulations appear at 20 CFR § 702.501. Under this framework, the Department of Labor’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs (OWCP) provides rehabilitation services to permanently disabled employees who cannot return to their prior work because of a covered injury.

Vocational rehabilitation is the structured process of returning an injured worker to suitable gainful employment after a permanent disability prevents a return to the previous job. The services are coordinated through an OWCP rehabilitation specialist or counselor, who develops an individualized plan based on the worker’s medical restrictions, education, work history, and labor-market conditions where the worker lives.

Covered services typically include vocational testing and evaluation, formal classroom training or technical school, on-the-job training, job-search assistance, and resume and interview preparation. While you are in an approved training program, you generally continue to receive temporary total disability benefits at the federally calculated rate, which protects your wage benefits while you retrain instead of forcing you back to work too early.

How Wage-Earning Capacity Fits In

Vocational rehabilitation is closely tied to how the DBA calculates permanent partial disability. When a contractor reaches maximum medical improvement but still has lasting work restrictions, the carrier or the ALJ will assess the worker’s post-injury wage-earning capacity. If you can no longer earn what you earned overseas, the difference between your pre-injury average weekly wage and your post-injury earning capacity drives the long-term benefit amount.

This is where vocational rehabilitation cuts both ways. A good training program can put you in a better job and improve your life. The carrier, however, may try to use a hypothetical “suitable alternative employment” — sometimes identified by a labor-market survey — to argue that your earning capacity is higher than it really is, and that your weekly benefits should drop. Disputes over which jobs are actually suitable, available, and reachable for an injured worker are common in DBA cases and often require an Administrative Law Judge to resolve.

Country-specific factors also matter. A logistics worker injured in Kuwait or a security contractor hurt in Iraq often has limited domestic job options that match the wages they were earning on a hardship contract, and that gap is precisely what vocational rehabilitation and wage-earning-capacity analysis are meant to address.

How to Request Vocational Rehabilitation

You can ask for a vocational rehabilitation referral through the OWCP claims examiner handling your DBA case, or your attorney can request it on your behalf. The earlier in the claim you raise it — particularly once your treating doctor has issued permanent work restrictions — the more time you have to put a meaningful plan in place. If the carrier refuses to support training that the OWCP has approved, the dispute can be brought to an Administrative Law Judge within the DOL’s Office of Administrative Law Judges.

If a work injury overseas has changed what you can do for a living, call Friedman, Rodman & Frank at (877) 448-8585 for a free case evaluation. You can also contact our DBA attorneys online. You pay nothing unless we recover benefits for you.