Many employers put safety incentive programs into place to try to prevent workplace injuries from occurring. These programs frequently work by offering a cash incentive or some other reward if a certain number of days pass without any workers experiencing an injury which necessitates time off from work. Often, an entire group is rewarded as long as no one in the group has to take time off. If even one worker sustains an injury and takes days off from work, no one in the group gets the incentive.

In more than three decades of trying workers comp cases, Lawyer Doug Landau has noticed that women’s workplace injury cases are sometimes more complicated than men’s. Having represented pregnant bartenders, senior caregivers with child rearing responsibilities in the home, and regular substitute teachers, Landau acknowledges how daunting it can be for women who have to juggle their health, home life and careers all at once.

Workplace injuries aren’t exclusive to physically-demanding industries, they can happen anywhere. Whether the injuries are a result of malfunctioning machinery, an object falling from a shelf or even slipping on a wet floor, they can leave people scrambling to cover the overwhelming medical bills that can pile up throughout the recovery period and for quite some time after. 

It is universally understood that workers’ compensation covers physical injuries sustained during the course of employment. However, whether workers’ compensation covers psychological injuries can be a bit more complex.  This is based in large part on the fact that mental injuries are not as easily identifiable by medical professionals as a broken bone or severe laceration. Psychological claims often cannot be measured through physical findings. Instead, an employee may present subjective mental symptoms.

What is a legal presumption? Can a legal presumption be rebutted by sufficient contrary evidence?Wisconsin workers’ compensation law contains many presumptions. For example, for firefighters, it is presumed that if a firefighter has cancer, the cancer is employment-related. The Statute applies to any State, County, or Municipal firefighter who has worked for ten years with at least two-thirds of the working hours as a firefighter who has cancer of the skin, breast, central nervous system, or lymphatic, digestive, hematological, urinary, skeletal, oral, or reproductive systems. 

When an employee settles a workers’ compensation claim, the employer often wants to terminate the employee and is cautious because of potential age discrimination.An individual who has been discriminated against because of his or her age may be entitled to back pay, reinstatement, hiring, promotion, front pay, liquidated damages, and court costs and attorney fees.

Benefits for injured workers continue to be under attack throughout the country. In New York, there have been a number of changes in the last decade, all in the name of reform. These reforms were encouraging at first as they increased the weekly benefits for some higher wage-earning injured workers for the first time in decades. They also created medical treatment guidelines under the guise of allowing injured workers to obtain pre-approval on certain medical treatments and procedures.  

If you’ve been injured on the job in the state of Colorado, it is technically legal for an employer to fire you during the process of a workers’ compensation claim.  However, employers are not legally able to fire employees out of retaliation because of the claim. They must present valid reasons for the termination.

If you are injured at work, most companies have workers’ compensation insurance to help pay for your medical expenses. Workers’ compensation insurance may also provide disability payments for time you have to take off work (usually around two-thirds of your normal salary). It may also pay additional benefits like retraining and future medical expenses, including rehabilitation.