Recently, American Airlines made news for retaliating against flight attendants for reporting worker illnesses from jet fuel fumes seeping into the cabin. They now face penalties.  Employers often try to put their heads in the sand regarding workplace health and safety problems and are incentivized to try to ignore worker injuries wherever possible. Yet doing so is against the law.  You’re responsible for reporting a workplace injury to your employer. Your employer is responsible for contacting the workers’ compensation insurance company.  Under New Jersey Law, the employer must file a First Report on Injury with the New Jersey Division of Workers Compensation within 21 days of your accident. Yet some employers balk at fulfilling this duty. Employer Disputes the Injury Some employers refuse to file injuries because they claim you weren’t injured or the injury has nothing to do with work.  You should immediately contact a New Jersey workers’ compensation

While workers compensation is required to cover 100% of the costs associated with healing any injury you took on the job, they are not required to cover you when you get sick with Covid-19, need preventative care, or need to manage other ongoing conditions, like diabetes. Those expenses must either be paid out-of-pocket or handled by your health insurance provider.  49% of workers are solely reliant on their jobs for health insurance.  It’s natural to wonder how your workers compensation case might impact your access to health insurance for issues other than your work-related injury.  Unfortunately, New Jersey doesn’t offer any protections to employees who want to keep their benefits while receiving workers compensation. You can protect your coverage for twelve weeks with the Family and Medical Leave Act, which gives you twelve work weeks of federally protected leave.  You may also be able to continue your health benefits through

This year, three workers died in an Amazon facility here in New Jersey, leading to a rush of OSHA investigations. Some places are inherently dangerous. Every year, 70 to 80 people die on the job in New Jersey. While these numbers may seem low, they are devastating to the families who are left behind, especially if the deceased worker was the primary breadwinner for the family.  The surviving, actively married spouse of a worker who died on the job may thus claim benefits, as may a dependent child who lived in the worker’s household, or full-time dependent children under the age of 23. Severely mentally or physically disabled children may also apply. What do death benefits cover?  These benefits cover the following: While most people cannot solely survive on these benefits they can go a long way towards keeping a family afloat while they seek their own employment or make

New Jersey created the Second Injury Fund in 1923. This fund was meant to encourage employers to hire disabled workers by limiting their liability for compensation payments. Employers were afraid that workers who had already been injured on the job or who have pre-existing conditions would be more prone to injuries on the new job thanks to their partial disability.  When does the Second Injury Fund take over? If you are injured in a new way on the new job and are rendered totally disabled by the new injury, the Second Injury Fund eventually takes over payments, rather than the employer’s workers compensation policy. This policy also covers you in cases where a combination of a preexisting injury or illness and a workplace injury cause total permanent disability.  You may still receive temporary benefits from your employer for a second injury. Fund benefits kick in six months before the end

Dependency benefits are the benefits awarded to the dependents of a worker who dies on the job in New Jersey. They are not to be confused with unemployment dependency benefits, which are different.  Benefits cover: Up to 70% of the deceased worker’s applicable wage, subject to state minimum and maximum rates for the year of death Payment of any medical bills that were incurred before the worker died Reimbursement of up to $3,500 in burial costs. These benefits are offered instead of wrongful death benefits when a worker dies on the job.  Who counts as a dependent?  A person’s spouse and children generally count as dependents. Adopted children, parents, grandparents, grandchildren, and siblings can sometimes count as dependents if they were residing in the household of the deceased at the time of death. How to Claim Dependency Benefits To start, contact your loved one’s employer. They should be providing you

Income reconstruction usually happens in cases where an employee works part-time, and does not work the same number of hours every week.  This allows the employee to receive fair compensation for lost wages. Examples of Income Reconstruction For example, if you work an average of $20 a week at $20 an hour, then your average weekly wage should be computed at $400…not the $200 you would have made on the off week where the employer only had ten hours of work for you.  Income reconstruction may also be used in cases where the employee usually works full time, but is sometimes part time due to business demand. This often happens in the construction industry, wherein the employee might be very busy during the warmer months but have a shorter work week during the winter months. The judge might opt to use the normal 40 hour workweek for that employee’s wages

Many jobs in New Jersey require copious amounts of overtime. If you are a non-exempt employee who works more than 40 hours a week, you are generally entitled to time-and-a-half pay.  Exempt employees are salaried employees. In general, you must make at least $455 a week before you can be considered an exempt employee. Some employers try hard to misclassify employees as exempt when they should not be, and this is an issue your New Jersey workers compensation lawyer can handle for you if this is true in your case.  If you routinely work overtime, you will be happy to know that New Jersey workers compensation law does require your overtime pay to be taken into account when determining your average weekly wage for the purpose of paying temporary disability benefits. The workers compensation insurance company must take your average weekly wage, including overtime, paid during a six month period.

One of the worst things about the workers compensation process is that you’re not working with you’re own doctor. You’re working with a doctor chosen by your employer and affiliated with your employer. That means that your doctor may not be working in your best interests.  That doctor might well tell you that you’re fine to return to work even while you’re still suffering from extreme pain or disabilities. They might ignore every concern you raise about returning to work.  And if you don’t go back when the doctor orders you to go back, you could lose your workers compensation benefits. Many people return to work before they’ve reached Maximum Medical Improvement (MMI), so it’s not even unusual.  Some particularly unscrupulous doctors may even reduce the amount of restrictions you should really be laboring under for your health so that you are returned to full duty, or so that your

A new job is exciting, and the last thing you’re probably anticipating is an injury when you show up for your very first day. Nevertheless, accidents happen, especially on hazardous worksites where injuries are an occupational hazard.  Fortunately, you are entitled to workers compensation benefits from the moment you are employed. You could be on the job for 5 minutes, get hurt, and receive benefits.  The process is exactly the same. You report your injury to the supervisor and they send you to a doctor. Your treatment should be covered.  The process is only slightly complicated by the fact that you won’t have paystubs or a work history to draw a salary from in the event that you need to take time off work to heal. You’re eligible for up to 70% of your weekly wage, but what is that amount? When that happens, employers will generally draw on your

In New Jersey, independent contractors are not covered by workers compensation. So, of course, many employers try to classify workers as independent contractors, even when they’re not.  You might find yourself being treated like an employee right up until the moment you get hurt. Fortunately, New Jersey courts are on to this behavior, and they aren’t tolerating it. The East Bay Drywall Case  Recently, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in East Bay Drywall, LLC v. Department of Labor and Workforce Development.  In this case, workers employed by East Bay Drywall did meet some of the criteria laid out under the “ABC Test” which determines whether an individual is an employee or an independent contractor. East Bay would contact workers to see if they were available for certain jobs, and they were free to accept or decline the offer. Some workers even left the jobs mid-installation if they found a