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Workers
Compensation - What is it?
Suppose you get injured or sick from something at work. If you sue your employer for negligence, you
may be able to recover a significant amount of money and damages. However, to succeed you would have to prove that your
employer is at fault – that’s a difficult task. The law firm of Goldenberg Heller Antognoli Rowland Short & Gori, P.C. represents
and assists employees who have been hurt at their places of employment.
Instead of suing your employer, which costs both employers and employees a lot of time and money, the workers' compensation system was developed to promptly compensate employees who are injured and save employers from having to pay vast sums of money in damages to injured employees. Workers' compensation is a system designed to compensate you if you are injured or become ill at work. It acts in place of a lawsuit against your employer.
What
does your employer pay?
Under workers' compensation, your employer must pay you benefits--usually lost wages and medical bills--and those benefits are the only benefits you can receive for your injury or illness. In return for guaranteed benefits, you don't have to prove your employer was at fault--any work-related injury is covered.
Each state has its own workers' compensation system. Every system is a little different, but there are similarities. To get the money to pay benefits, employers buy workers' comp insurance, required by most states.
Federal employees have a separate workers' compensation system, which is similar to most state plans.
Getting
lost wages
If your workers' comp injury requires you to miss work, you are entitled to lost wages. State law varies on how long you need to be out of work before you can begin getting lost wages and on how much money you can get.
Workers' comp doesn't cover minor injuries and illnesses. An injury must cause you to miss a certain number of days at work before it is compensable. Once the disability has persisted beyond the waiting period, the employee can begin to recover his or her lost time from work.
Types
of disabilities
The percentage of your wages that is recoverable varies depending on the type of injury you have.
"Permanent Partial Disability" refers to a medical disability that lasts for an indefinite period of time and does not prevent the employee from returning to gainful employment.
"Permanent Total Disability" refers to a medical disability that is unlikely to improve, despite medical treatment, and prevents the employee from returning to gainful employment.
"Temporary Partial Disability" refers to a medical disability that is expected to last for a limited period of time and does not prevent the employee from returning to gainful employment.
"Temporary Total Disability" refers to a medical disability that is expected to last for a limited period of time and prevents the employee from returning to gainful employment for that limited period of time.
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