National Organization of Injured Workers

A Quick History Of Workers' Compensation.

Attempting to address the coverage included under a Workers' Compensation policy, we thought a little history lesson might be insightful.

Before the industrial revolution, Workers' Compensation coverage didn't exist or was considered unimportant.

In the shipping industry, you were entitled to wages, transportation, maintenance, and cure if you fell sick or were injured in the service of a ship and could also bring an action against the ship itself under general maritime law if the illness was caused by the unseaworthiness of the vessel.

Agriculture workers enjoyed little in the way of civil rights and injuries to these workers were not considered to be a problem by the American public.

Injuries to trade workers were infrequent since virtually all of their work was performed slowly and meticulously by hand.

With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, high-speed machinery and mass-production techniques, combined with poor working conditions, led to a startling increase in work-related injury, disease and death.

At that time, an employee's only recourse was to sue the employer based on the employer's failure to meet one or more of its common-law obligations to the employee.

According to common law, an employer had five obligations to its employees:

To provide a safe place to work.

To provide an employee with a sufficient number of competent fellow employees.

To provide safe tools and equipment.

To develop and enforce safety rules.

To warn employees of inherent work-related dangers of which employees could not reasonably be expected to be aware.

In time, three common-law defenses arose giving the employer a strong case against the employee making it impossible for the employee to sue the employer for remedy.

Those three defenses were commonly referred to and defined as the following:

Assumption of risk - you took the job knowing what could happen.
Contributory negligence - your actions or inactions contributed to your injury/disease/death.
Negligence of a fellow employee - your injuries caused by others' negligence were not the employer's fault.

To make matters worse, common law of the 1800s stated that only the injured worker had a right to file a suit against the employer.

If an employee were killed on the job, families of the deceased had no means for recourse.

For the sake of brevity, we fast forward to the time where Workers' Compensation is instituted in the United States and the 'no-fault' law is enforced.

This law meant that if an employee were injured on the job, the employee was compensated by the employer, regardless of whether the employer was negligent, and in exchange for this automatic, 'no-fault' compensation, the employee forfeited the right to bring suit for compensatory damages against the employer.

As a note, to be covered under a Workers' Compensation statute, an injury or disease must arise out of and in the course of employment.

In most instances, the Workers' Compensation law provides full and unlimited medical expense benefits for a covered injury or disease.

Disability is paid after an assessment of the level of disability is determined: temporary partial, temporary total, permanent partial or permanent total.

Disability income is typically paid as a percentage of the employee's currently reported wages, typically 66 2/3 percent, and is subject to minimum or maximum dollar amounts.

Other benefits under the policy include rehabilitation and death benefits.

Most states require their employers to provide Workers' Compensation coverage for its employees.