There are certain moments in a worker’s life where he or she might have an “accident” that results in bodily injury and a loss of work time, which costs money for the person in terms of a paycheck. That moment can occur in even the safer of jobs, like an office cubicle, where something falls on a person’s head.
These accidents are difficult for many Americans, as most Americans do not have a certain amount of savings to make up for the loss of income from their accident in the environment of the job. Roughly 75% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, and 27% have no savings at all. This is a difficult situation for Americans.
This is difficult because Americans often don’t plan for a loss of income flow situation, where income comes and goes and health issues can happen. Americans have little savings built up and a great deal of credit card debt, which poses an issue for Americans who lose a job or have a period of time when they cannot work.
There are numerous reasons a person might have a work-related accident. First, a person might fall on slick floors. This occurs for most of the workplace accidents, where restaurant workers, food workers, janitors, and other individuals try to tread on slick floors all the time.
85% of worker’s compensation claims are attributed to employees slipping on slick floors. And falling on slick floors can result in a great deal of time away from work for those individuals. 22% of slip/fall incidents resulted in more than 31 days of work in a previous time period.
But not all accidents come from slick floors. There are employees that deal with difficult and dangerous equipment, which can result in bodily injury, such as the loss of a limb. The damaging of one arm, for instance, can be significant in terms of that person’s future functioning at a position.
If the person who has damaged their arm has only been trained to do the kind of task that utilizes that arm, they will be disabled for a time until they can be retrained to do another job that does not require the use of that arm. In fact, the average compensation for that kind of accident is significant.
The maximum average compensation for an employee who damaged one arm at work in the United States amounted to approximately $169,880 as of March 2015. But compared to the amount of work that person will lose as a result of that arm being damaged, that number is not quite that high. Especially if they are disabled. They will lose possibly years of income.
Workers become injured in a variety of accidents. Those accidents can often be the worker’s fault, as they disregarded certain safety procedures, such as not wearing non-slip shoes on a slick floor for a job that requires them. There also might be a variety of accidents that take place with complex tasks where a person ignored safety procedures.
However, there are some moments where an employee has an accident and the company is responsible. The company holds the fault for a situation where they have not educated the employee about safety procedures, have not held them accountable for not following procedures, or allowed employees to break procedures.
74% of states require all businesses to have workers’ compensation. This means as the result of an accident, they are allowed to be paid a certain amount (generally less in some level) during their time off from work, on the assumption they will return to the job when they have recovered from the accident.
But some employers refuse to pay a worker for an accident in the workplace that could have been prevented if the employer had trained, educated, enforced, or not allowed the employee to disregard safety and injure him or herself. In that situation, the employee can sue the company using a workers compensation lawyer.
A workers compensation lawyer is an injury attorney or lawyer that specializes in workers compensation benefits and can file a workers compensation claim. A workers compensation lawyer that is experienced will know how to fight the employer for benefits. A workers compensation lawyer can win workers compensation benefits for his or her client.