Getting hurt on-the-job can happen to anyone, including California airport employees. Airport workers face many threats to their health and safety, including a risk injury by violence, overexertion or repetitive stress on their body.
If an injury occurs to an airport worker, it will be important for the employee to understand his or her legal options for recovering benefits. Many workers may be covered by state workers' compensation laws and thus will be entitled to medical coverage for their work-related injury as well as entitled to disability income on a temporary or permanent basis. For employees at the airport who are employed by the federal government, work injury benefits may also be available.
Although injured workers can technically file workers' compensation claims on their own, there are many benefits to having an attorney help you navigate the system. An experienced work injury lawyer can help airport workers who get hurt on-the-job to gather and file the appropriate paperwork, file it on time and to do so with the right entity. Your attorney can also help you immediately respond if your claim is rejected.
The Rights of Airport Employees to Workers' Compensation Benefits
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration published a list of accident reports at airports. This list shows there are a huge number of different ways airport workers could be hurt. A few of many examples of injuries sustained by airport workers include:
- Employees crashing aircraft;
- An employee suffering a hernia due to lifting tow bars;
- Employees being hit by vehicles;
- Employees falling off moving tarmac stairs;
- Cargo dollies running over airport workers;
- Repetitive motion injuries.
For employees to prevail on a workers' compensation claim, they will need to show how their injury happened. They do not need to show their employer was negligent, but they will need to prove the injury was work-related.
According to US News & World Report, one injured worker recently sustained an injury which caused the loss of her leg as she was driving a luggage tug which flipped over.
Although she was initially denied disability benefits because she was driving the luggage tug to meet her mother to pick up food, the state workers' compensation appeals board reversed and awarded her benefits. While every state is different, the case does illustrate workers' comp appeals boards tend to take a relatively expansive view of which injuries are considered work-related.
An experienced work injury lawyer can help injured employees to determine if an injury is work related and thus does entitle them to workers' comp coverage. An attorney will also explain to injured employees the requirements for reporting a work injury in a timely manner to protect eligibility for injury benefits.
Finally, an attorney can help airport employees who are employed by the federal government to understand their rights under The Federal Employees' Compensation Act, which the Department of Labor explains provides work-injury coverage for many federal workers who suffer harm as a result of the job they do for the government.