DWC055 - Request to Adjust Average Weekly Wage for Seasonal Employee

What this form is

The DWC055, Request to Adjust Average Weekly Wage for a Seasonal Employee, adjusts the wage figure behind a seasonal worker's benefit checks. Your average weekly wage, called your AWW, is normally calculated once, from the 13 weeks before your injury, and it does not change afterward. Seasonal work does not fit that rule. A worker injured at the peak of harvest season would not have earned peak wages in January, and a worker injured in the slow months would not have stayed at slow-month wages in July. For seasonal employees, the law therefore allows the AWW to be adjusted through the year, as often as necessary, to reflect what you could actually have expected to earn in each stretch of it. Temporary income benefits, called TIBs, the weekly checks that replace part of your lost wages, then move with the adjusted AWW.

Can the carrier cut my checks for the off-season?

Yes, if you are a seasonal employee. The insurance carrier, called the carrier, can ask the Division of Workers' Compensation, called the DWC, to lower your AWW for the months your earnings would have dropped, and your weekly checks drop with it. The carrier must notify you first, and you have two weeks (14 days) to send in your own wage records before the request goes forward.

Hold onto the other half of the rule, because it is the half nobody volunteers: the adjustment cuts both ways, and you can request it too. The same form that lowers your AWW for the slow season raises it for the months your earnings would have climbed. A carrier that remembers to file for the off-season decrease and forgets the peak-season increase is paying you less than the rule intends. The increase does not happen on its own. You, or someone acting for you, must ask.

How the process runs

The form has parts for the carrier and parts that concern you, which confuses nearly everyone who receives a copy. The sequence is what matters.

1. Notice first. Before asking the DWC for an adjustment, the carrier must notify you of its intent. That notice may arrive on this form or on the companion notice, DWC054.
2. Your two weeks. You have two weeks (14 days) from receiving the notice to send your wage documents to the adjuster: pay stubs, W-2s, employer statements, anything showing what you actually earn across the year. If you cannot get your records, the Texas Workforce Commission at 800-628-5115 can help you obtain your wage history.
3. If you ignore it, it proceeds without you. Silence does not stall the request. The carrier can ask the DWC to issue a subpoena, which is a legal order compelling the records, and then seek approval of the adjustment on the records it has. The adjustment that results is built from a file you left one-sided.
4. The DWC decides. The carrier submits its request, and the Division rules on it. If you disagree with an adjustment, you can request a benefit review conference, called a BRC, which is an informal DWC meeting for resolving disputes.

Because seasonal adjustment can happen as often as necessary, expect this cycle more than once in a long claim. Each notice restarts the same two-week clock, and each one deserves the same response.

Using the form in your favor

If your benefit rate was set from a slow 13 weeks and your busy season has arrived, the adjustment rule exists for you as much as for the carrier. Gather proof of your earning pattern: last year's peak-season pay stubs, employer records, tax documents showing the seasonal swing. The correction process for wage errors generally, and what counts as proof, is covered in Average Weekly Wage in Texas Workers' Compensation Claims. An adjuster who receives a documented request for a seasonal increase is dealing with a worker who understands the rule, and that alone changes how the file gets handled.