Workers Compensation

10 Pages 2450 Words

“When I first started working construction many years ago if you cut your finger, or incurred another type of minor injury you typically dealt with it yourself. If there was no first aid kit available, you simply took off your shirt, cut a piece of it and made a bandage out of it. Oh yes…you washed it with your drinking water. Typically there were no first aid kits on most jobs back then. So what is different about today? One difference is today the employer typically mandates you go to see a doctor if you have a cut that a dose of Neosporin and a Band-Aid would fix. Why? Because the employer is afraid of potential liabilities” (JMD par. 2). Workers compensation has become a required system for every employer since 1911, the first government policy, implemented into the business world in order to protect workers; Compensation Act of 1911, which participation of employers was voluntary (Workers Compensation in California par. 1). However, two years later the government enacted another law which required employers to “provide benefits for all employees on the job and generally prohibited employees from suing their employers over their injuries” calling it the Workers’ Compensation, Insurance and Safety Act of 1913 (Workers Compensation in California par. 1). The way benefits are broken down and distributed to workers who “sustain an injury ‘arising out of and in the course of’ their employment” are categorized in six areas: medical care, temporary disability benefits, permanent disability benefits, vocational rehabilitation services, supplement job displacement benefits, and death benefits (Division par. 4). Medical care consists of “receiving all medical care reasonably required to cure or relieve the effects of the injury” (Division par. 5). Unlike medical care, temporary disability benefits apply if the employee is unable to return to work within three days as a result of an injury (Division par. 5). Injuries th...