Know Your Workers Comp Rights
Brian O Sutter
Workers’ Compensation
People in Florida take on a huge number of different jobs in order to keep themselves—and their state economy—vibrant and financially healthy. Some people work hard putting up new buildings, or ensuring that new homes and offices get their air conditioning properly installed. Other people dress up as colorful characters from film and television to entertain children. Still others work in offices, filling out reports, crunching numbers, and others are down on a fabrication floor, using plasma torches and other high tech equipment to help build important components of Florida’s vehicles, buildings and other hardware.The one thing that the state of Florida works to hard to ensure for the majority of its workers is that, should an unexpected event happen that results in injury, there is some kind of financial reimbursement, known as workers compensation. But if you’ve never had to use it, do you know how it works, or what it means to you?
Workers Comp In Florida
Workers compensation, known more commonly was “workers comp,” is a form of insurance that employers in most lines of work are legally required to provide to employees. This is not the same as health insurance or dental benefits, which are seen more as employee incentives or “perks.” Workers comp exists to protect employees in the event they are injured. It provides financial assistance while they are recovering, assuming that the injury sustained leaves them unable to work.
It’s important to note that workers comp is one sense, “automatic.” If a worker is injured while on the job, they automatically qualify for workers comp, regardless of whether the employer was at fault for not for the injury due to negligence. Any employer that has four or more employees must offer workers comp to those employees. However, if a company is in construction, then even the presence of just one employee requires that the employer must have workers comp available.
Legal & Recognized
Workers comp must be provided through a certified and recognized insurance carrier. If a workers comp policy comes from a company with no verifiable, licensed background it is neither legal, nor will it be accepted. If you are injured at work and your employer has no workers comp in place, or is providing inadequate workers comp because of an arrangement with a company you don’t even recognize as a major insurance carrier, that’s a big problem.
If you are gainfully employed, whether full time or part-time, and receive an injury while on the job, you should be automatically entitled to workers comp. If you don’t receive it, or your employer claims that you are being denied workers comp due to an employee violation on your part, don’t automatically assume you have no options. Talk to a worker comp employee about your workers compensation case. And if the injury you sustained was not your fault, but the result of negligence on the part of your employers at your place of work, this is even more reason to seek out advice from an experienced legal expert in workplace related insurance, compensation and negligence issues.