There are instances when employees become victims of others' negligence. Most of us must have witnessed accidents in work. These accidents don't just happen in factories or huge industries but can also occur in normal offices, warehouses, retail stores, construction sites and other workplaces as well.
The employers usually take all kinds of safety measures to ensure that their employees are safe in the office. Corporate organizations also take care of the ergonomics so that the employees don't suffer any kind of back pains in the long run. However, there are still instances where we witness accidents at our workplaces.
When Alfonso Escobar fell into an unguarded elevator shaft in February, the 47 year old entered into the surreal world of worker's compensation. After his three story fall, he survived four surgeries, two evictions, and eight weeks of silence from his employer, inaction on the part of his insurer and nearly $16,000 in medical bills.
The insurer, a company that works for Cantel Homes, the general contractor that managed the townhouse project where Escobar fell, agrees that they should cover his legal bills, but not his lost wages.
Teaching staff and administrators are hit, kicked, punched and subjected to taunts and threats virtually every day they go to work, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers conference was told.
In fact, the number of assaults reported to the union has more than doubled in five years. Most teachers, however are reluctant to report incidents as reporting such incidents could reflect poorly on the school delegates.
Workers around the world and in a range of industries have been exposed to silica over long periods of time. They have been subject to fine particles of sand (silica) that cause breakdown, scarring and shrinkage of the lungs. The 10 to 40 year latency period means that most claims deal with works that were exposed to the substance until the 1980s, but physicians contend that the peak in new cases will not be seen until around 2016.
These work-related illnesses have led to new personal injury claims in Australia where the extent of silica related health issues is not yet known. The US already has 70,000 silica health related claims, with some individual claims as high as $US7.6 million dollars.
A major survey conducted by EEF, the manufacturers' organisation, has drawn a clear link between significant investment in occupational health and f reduced short and long term absence rates as well as improved employee welfare.
EEF has a membership of 6,000 manufacturing, engineering, and technology-based businesses and represents the interests of manufacturing. It is one of the UK's leading providers of business services in employment relations, employment law, health, safety and environment, manufacturing performance, and education and skills.
On Tuesday, a House panel approved a scaled-back plan to change elements of the workers' compensation system even though no one seemed to be happy with the compromises.
The panel voted to end a month-long stalemate and to send the bill to the full House, the Labour, Commerce and Industry Committee. Discussions during panel hearings were complicated and contentious and for a while, it appeared as though no agreement was possible.
With an estimated 2.5 million people in the UK affected and £10 billion in lost production annually, back pain has become one of the largest problems facing the workforce today.
The Arthritis Research Campaign (ARC) defined back pain as a great scourge of the 21st century. Large numbers of patients and many health care personnel think that activity worsens back pain but the opposite is true. A 180-degree change in opinion is needed as new studies reveal that less activity weakens back muscles and heightened activity aids in recovery and reduces pain.
Out of an estimated 850,000 workplace injuries reported each year, less than 10%, or fewer than 80,000, actually receive compensation, which seriously brings scrutiny on the entire notion that business is being crippled by the so-called "compensation culture."
If you do get hurt at work, your best bet is to suffer hearing or breathing problems. People who suffer some sort of those ailments are most likely to receive compensation. Workers who suffer from stress or repetitive strain injury are the least likely to receive any compensation.
A New York Court of Appeals has ruled that immigration status is not to be considered a factor when undocumented workers sue for wages lost when they are hurt on the job. The ruling stemmed from civil lawsuits filed by two New York City men. Gorgonio Balbuena, from Mexico, fell from a ramp at a Manhattan construction site in April 2000, sustaining head injuries, and Stanislaw Majlinger, from Poland, was injured in January 2001 when a scaffold collapsed. Because other parties were involved, the wage claims did not fall under worker's compensation.
The new legal precedent rectified an inconsistency in the lower courts concerning a US Supreme Court ruling, known as the Hoffman Plastics decision, denying back pay to an undocumented worker. In that case, the court said making such awards conflicted with federal immigration policies.
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