Accident at Work Claims: Health and Safety Statistics

What is the implication of the number of injuries and illness to the growing number of  accident at work claims in the United Kingdom?

It has been reported that 1.1 million working people suffered from illness in 2012. About 173 workers were killed at work and 111,164 employees were injured. The figures are quite alarming. No wonder more and more people are filing for accident at work claims. Employees who were injured in the workplace are pursuing the claim to compensate for the mishap caused by someone else’s fault.

The claimant or the person seeking compensation includes all occupations working as managers, senior officials, professional, administrative and secretarial, personal service, skilled trades. sales and service, and process/plant operatives. These individuals are working in industries such as public administration, education, banking and finance, agriculture and fishing, energy and water, manufacturing, construction, hotels and restaurants, transport and communication, health and other services.

They can seek compensation based on their rights and guidelines of law. The rights of the employees depend on the statutory rights and the contract of employment. Some of the statutory rights of the employees include right to written statement of terms, statutory sick pay and statutory redundancy pay. 

Bringing a Claim

Employees suffer from illness or injury because their employers failed to provide the health and safety requirement of the law. This is the reason why individuals are filing for accident at work claims to bring justice and obtain compensation.

The claim is for victims of negligence who suffers from illness or injury due to someone’s fault. A wrongdoer can be a co-worker or an employer. Employers have a duty to take care of their employee’s health and safety. Failure of the employer to fulfill his duty is considered negligence.

The rights of the employees need to be exercised in the workplace. The right to written statement of terms of employment indicates the job title, wage, hours of work, holiday entitlement, sick pay, pension scheme notice and many others. The contract of employment cannot be taken away from the individual. If a person is injured whilst working, he is entitled to a sick pay. If the employer was negligent due to noncompliance with the Health and Safety regulations, the injured employee can make a claim for the injury incurred at work.

It is necessary to get legal advice from a specialist on work-related injuries. Ask a specialist lawyer and know the details.

A Bedrock Philosophy

Many people can only live their lives happily by subscribing to a bedrock philosophy. Such a philosophy is something that you can ground your life on, a kind of meta-narrative. For example, some people believe that life is a story of good versus evil, a continual battle between God and the devil, with human beings as the prize. For others, life is about progress, where human beings are a part of an ongoing evolution, the end of which is absolute perfection. Another example is the meta-narrative of happiness. In this case, human life is about increasing felicity and decreasing sadness, usually by pursuing hedonistic or spiritual goods. What all of these bedrock philosophies have in common is that they provide people with a sense of why they are alive. It makes them a part of a comprehensible story, one which they can follow from birth and until death, a tale which orients them to reality.

In demanding a work claim, it is usually better to have one than otherwise. In fact, I think it is to help people cope up with stressful situations that bedrock philosophies were invented in the first place. For some reason, it seems to me as if people just cannot accept a reality where there is no visible order. In a world where innocent people are punished, just as culpable people are exonerated, people, too aghast to think that this is the nature of the world, conjured different systems to justify the apparent lack of justice in the world. Think about it. For the religious point of view, an imperfect world is justified because it is not the “real” world, but only a preparation for the “real” one, which comes after death. For the Enlightenment thinkers, imperfection in the world springs from lack of scientific and psychological knowledge, the obtaining of which can lead to its perfection. For the Epicureans, the world is imperfect so as to dare us to make our inner worlds, our appetites and desires, more perfect. The general premise is that the imperfection, the evil, the corruptibility of the world, is there for a good reason.

Thus, in processing your work claim, clinging to such a philosophy can never be wrong. Whether or not the particular one you may be believing in is true or false does not matter so much as whether or not it can help you survive your ordeal.

Purpose of Work Accident Claims

The purpose of work accident claims is to bring justice and seek compensation for injuries caused by someone’s fault.

Accidents can happen in the workplace like in the office, warehouse, and factory. Injuries, occupational diseases, dangerous occurrences and work-related death should be reported and recorded to the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrence and Regulations (RIDDOR). RIDDOR provides guidelines on how to report such incidents that may occur in the workplace. It is important to consider few things in reporting such incidents. First, the accident arises whilst a worker is carrying out a task or something related to work. Next, it is caused by machinery, plant or substance. Lastly, the condition of the site or premises during the incident should be checked.

Employees can be injured whilst one is carrying out a task. It can occur while delivering goods, handling or lifting a load, working on heights and arranging the supplies. The use of defective equipment or working with hazardous chemicals may harm the employees. The condition of the workplace can be a hazard to the people working there.

Employees can be entitled to work accident claims. A legal advice can help in seeking compensation for the pain, loss and suffering of the person.

How to Claim

Work accident claims compensate for the injuries sustained due to the mistakes of others.

Three things are essentials in the claim. First, the injury occurred in the workplace. Second, the injury is caused by the mistakes of others. Third, evidence is necessary to show the validity of the claim.

An injury can be physical, psychological or even financial. The injuries sustained by an employee hinder him from going to work and this result to a loss of income. This can be compensated together with the expenses incurred due to the injury.

In seeking compensation, it is necessary to prove that someone is at fault. It can be a co-worker or an employee. A mistake can be due to carelessness, unsafe work practices or lack of training. The employer owes a duty to take care of the health and safety of the people in his premises. Failure to do so entitles the injured person to bring a claim.

Showing evidence can make a strong case. Pieces of evidence are gathered to prove the negligence of the offender. It includes medical statement from the doctor, employment details and testimonies of eye witnesses.

A specialist lawyer provides legal advice on personal injury.

How Off-court Settlements Monopolize Reconciliations Among Claimants

If you were to ask me how No Win No Fee UK claims could be settled quickly and amicably, then I would answer what I have been advocating ever since I settled my own work accident claim five years ago: talk outside the courts.

There are many reasons why this works. But first, let me talk about why I think on-court solutions, hardly, if ever work.

For one thing, once you involve the courts in your accident claim, the probable effect is that the claiming process becomes more serious, and with that, more difficult to unravel. The normal psychological effect of involving the courts among claimants and defendants is that they come to think of the claiming process no longer as a dispute that can be finished without hassle or drama, but a grand object which must be relentlessly pursued without compromise. It seems as if they think that once inside the courts, they must give Lady Justice herself a good show. The stakes, as they see it, are now weightier than before. Dignity, not just money, they feel, has now become the prize.

This is pathetic. If there is anything which the courts add to solving No Win No Fee UK claims, it’s either confusion or rage. Claiming your compensation is just as serious and just as valid when done outside the courts. Only superficial people whose minds are devoid of philosophy and think that specific locations hold a monopoly over specific kinds of virtue, will accept the argument that justice becomes more just in the house of a judge and less just outside of it. It’s senseless.

Another thing why on-court disputes rarely satisfy both parties is the tedium they involve. Courts are boring places, to be frank. If you want to spend countless hours listening to the drumming voice of a humorless judge articulating words and words of legal jargon than to simply talk to the person who injured you and ask for the proper amount of compensation, then it’s your choice. I would rather that I received my compensation early, even if it was less than the amount I should have received had I processed my claim with the help of the courts, if only I could be spared the boring tedium which is the hallmark of our judiciary.

Tick Tack Tick Tack

Tick, tack, tick, tack – so goes the hand of the clock.

Time is so precious to all occupations. Every minute counts. Deadlines, reports, meeting, a gigantic work, heavy lifting and all sorts of tasks. More energy, more strength, more time are required to finish these. This is how you describe the busy life of working people from different industries. They are busy as a bee. The long hours of working seems to be too short to beat the deadline.

An office worker rushes to his car after sipping a cup of coffee. Drives his car and off to work. While his hands are on the wheel, his mind is wondering on how to finish his report. He finds his way to the parking lot. All of a sudden, some boxes from the top of a truck fell on his head then to his shoulders and back.

A retail staff arranges the stocks on top of the shelf using an improvised ladder. Suddenly he tumbled on the ground and sustains minor fracture.

The team of kitchen staff and waiters are rushing to and fro to serve a crowd of customers flocking their restaurant on a busy Monday lunch. Spills of liquid and food tainted the floor. The wet and greasy floor was not clean up that’s why a waiter slipped on it.

An ordinary day for a regular worker became an odd day when he tripped on a cluttered wire and cable and breaks his ankle. Temporarily, he cannot walk the normal way.

A construction worker fell on top of a scaffold. He got some fractures on his arms and leg. It turned out that the person who built the scaffold is not trained that’s why it collapsed.

The protective clothing of a man working in the manufacturing company is not well-maintained. The worn-out suit was not sufficient to stand the effect of a harmful chemical. That man is suffering due to the dangerous chemical.

An accident at work is painful and not comfy. It rubs the time and delays the work. Sometimes it occurs when people are so busy and rushing into something. The lesson is to keep things organized, follow the rules and be careful all the time so that no one will get hurt.

Demanding Compensation Patiently

If there is one thing that I learned from my whole experience in demanding my work accident compensation, it is that good things cannot be had on short notice. Rather, they must be worked for, must be planned for, and most important, must be waited for.

Before my injurious accident, I was one of those who did things quickly, whatever it may be. Whether it was my laundry or my work or feeding my children or even having dinner with my husband, I always ensured that things got done quickly because that is how things should be done.

This is in no way an admission that I am hasty. I always study whatever it is that I want to do and then do it as quickly as possible. I don’t know, but maybe I got this attitude from watching too many military-themed movies. I’m a big fan too of military history. I think Bonaparte and Hitler, though they may have set wrong ends to pursue, were nevertheless blessed with formidable generals who knew that to strike means to strike quickly and without warning.

You could imagine my annoyance when my lawyer told me that days, sometimes even weeks, could be the intervals in the claiming process. For example, after sending a letter of accusation, we had to wait for a week for the reply. After that, we had to wait another week for a meeting with the defendant. Since my boss did not want to settle outside the courts, we had to bring our dispute to a judge’s attention and that required waiting for a month. And I won’t even mention the number of months the hearings lasted. Except maybe to point out that they too, were expectedly, far from each other. In other words, more waiting.

So I had to learn how to wait. My work accident compensation being no trifling figure, I thought that having started the claiming process, I may as well end it. And it did end and in my favor at that. Had it not, then I would have strangled my lawyer for making me undergo such a waiting process. That’s just not how things are supposed to be done.

Accidents at work: It’s temporary!

Accidents at work can be so shocking and most of all painful.

It shocking because in the midst of the hustle and bustle of life, an injury prevents you from working, limits your movement, robs you of enjoying a social life and give you pain here and there. To add problems to that, financial burden weighs you down. Bills and expenses are piling up almost reaching the ceiling but oh no! not as high as the tree. Oh please! Bills keep coming, expenses keeps rolling and pocket is getting empty. Payment for hospitals bills, medical costs, treatments fees, travel expenses, additional expenses and other miscellaneous expenses that arise from time to time.

Going back to and from the hospital is not easy especially when it’s hard to hop into the car. Looking at yourself injured and helpless is unimaginable. Taking medicines which are bitter to taste gets bitter knowing that it’s quite expensive! Treatment gives hope. Thanks to the people who buy the groceries, run errands and takes care of all the chores at home. Such a big help!

Good thing the technology can be reliable. Just a click away you can talk to your loved ones and entertains you while you can’t leave the house. Mobile phones, Internet and movies, books and music entertain you everyday.

The excruciating pain plus the emotional distress seems hard to bear. Sometimes anxieties worry depression and fear comes because of the problems that seem so big. But thank God for the support of family, friends and relatives who encourages and give hope. Soon this ordeal will be over. Pain will walk away and the bills will be paid. Trying to think positively and excited to get back to work. The pain and suffering is temporary. There is hope and a light at the end of the tunnel.

Someday you will look back and smile after going through the hard times. Learn from the experience in the past. Stay positive and keep happy heart so that time and pain won’t rob you of the good things in life. Hang on it’s temporary.