SACRAMENTO — As Arnold Schwarzenegger surveys the wreckage of what has been so far a failed governorship, he can see just one substantial accomplishment — an overhaul of the system of compensating workers for job-related illnesses and injuries.

As the governor looks ahead, however, he faces a growing drive to undo that workers’ compensation overhaul by the same forces that handed him a humbling special election defeat.

Labor unions and attorneys who specialize in work-comp cases are gearing up to push through a very friendly Legislature a bill to reverse or severely modify last year’s Schwarzenegger-sponsored legislation.

The battle over work comp, one of the Capitol’s perennial issues, will be a mini-version of the special election campaign, with Schwarzenegger and his allies in business pitted against unions and Democrats. And with the governor’s political clout much diminished as he faces a re-election campaign next year, Democrats may demand that he reverse himself on work comp as the price of getting anything he wants from the 2006 legislative session.

Such power politics would be nothing new. For decades, success in the multisided struggle over the multibillion-dollar insurance program has hinged on factions forming coalitions to muscle bills through the Capitol.

That’s how Schwarzenegger did it last year. With work-comp premiums soaring — thanks, in part, to a big benefit increase that labor and its allies forced predecessor Gray Davis to sign in 2002 — employers put up the money for a ballot measure that would have radically changed the system. And with the then-popular Schwarzenegger threatening to lead the campaign for it, Democrats and the unions caved, agreeing to more modest changes.

As the new work-comp rules took effect this year — tightening up medical payments and making it more difficult for workers to qualify for permanent disability benefits — the unions and their Democratic allies developed buyers’ remorse. They claimed the changes went further than they intended. With the work-comp attorneys, they began demanding changes to soften the blow. More recently, the California Medical Association joined in the chorus as doctors experienced decreases in payments.

Fueling demands for change, too, are allegations that work-comp insurers are reaping windfall profits from the sharply lower costs and not passing on their savings to employers in the form of lower premiums.

Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi, a Democrat, this month accused insurers of holding onto 60 percent of the cost-savings from the Schwarzenegger measure and a mild reform signed by predecessor Gray Davis in 2003 in response to employers’ complaints.

“I have been hammering on the insurance industry since this reform effort began to immediately pass through to businesses in the state of California any savings that materialized,” Garamendi said as he proposed another 15 percent reduction in rates next year.

Schwarzenegger remains adamant, through his spokespersons, that no major changes are needed. But it’s entirely possible that the one significant achievement of his administration could be erased, either through legislation or a ballot measure.

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