Office Workers Need Workers’ Compensation Coverage, Too
When most people think about workers’ compensation, they tend to think of people who work outside, at jobs that are immediately and constantly dangerous. In reality, any employee can be injured at any given job, and this goes for blue-collar, white-collar, and any situation in between. If you work in an office, there are still several potential ways for you to be injured on the job.
By far the most common type of injury in the office is a fall. Falls are, in general, the most common disabling injury, but for office workers, it is deceptively easy to slip and fall or trip and fall, causing injuries that can run the gamut from cuts and bruises to traumatic brain injuries (TBIs). Data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) shows that in 2020, almost 20 percent of the days required away from the workplace due to injury could be chalked up to ‘slips, trips, and falls.’
Lifting-related injuries can also require a worker to be absent from work for quite some time. Poor form when lifting can lead to serious back and neck injuries, even if the load being lifted was well within the person’s capacity at the time. It is important to keep in mind that this can happen even if the load is light, because too often, a worker may think they somehow brought their injury on themselves or they were somehow weak. Workers’ compensation is a no-fault system – in other words, even if you accidentally injured yourself, you may still be able to recover benefits regardless of fault.
The type of injury that is perhaps most associated with office work is the repetitive stress injury (RSI). While not every RSI will be compensable under Connecticut law, sometimes these conditions will fall under the heading of ‘occupational disease,’ RSI injuries in Connecticut are referred to as “repetitive trauma” claims and can be caused by the overuse of a particular body part or parts. It is not defined by a specific date of injury but a cumulative period of injurious exposure. if the employee can show that they developed the RSI as a direct result of their work. Carpal tunnel syndrome is the most common RSI, but there are a host of others and depending on the specific motions of one’s job, any one of them may develop.
Contact A Connecticut Workers’ Compensation Attorney
While some of the more severe workplace injuries tend to occur in industries like construction, this does not mean that office environments are uniformly safe. If you have been injured at your office job, contacting a Stratford workers’ compensation attorney from the Morizio Law Firm can be your first step toward collecting the compensation to which you are entitled. Contact our office today for a free consultation.
Sources:
cdc.gov/niosh/injury/fastfacts.html
law.justia.com/codes/connecticut/2020/title-31/chapter-568/section-31-275/
