Retail Workers And Illinois Workers' Compensation

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What do you think is the most dangerous job in the US to work at? As far as deaths go, it’s surely working on a fishing boat. The most major injuries seem to happen to construction workers and other laborers. But when it comes to who has the most injuries overall, the most dangerous job in America is working retail.

That might be a surprise to you, but not to anyone who works one of these jobs. In fact one report showed that more than 3 out of every 100 retail workers has a work related injury every year. Here are some cases we’ve seen:

• PETCO workers bitten by a dog.
• Target employees slipping on a wet floor.
• Home Depot garden center workers hurting their backs from lifting heavy bags and plants.
• Walgreens cashiers with carpal tunnel from essentially non-stop scanning.
• Superstore employees getting plantar fasciitis from walking around in steel toed boots all day.
• Jewel deli workers with cuts from a meat slicer.
• Walmart workers getting hurt in any way you can imagine.
• PTSD from being robbed at gun point at many stores.

Even though these are not construction jobs, there is often heavy machinery around that causes injuries too. The most common are from fork lifts that are supposed to move boxes (smashing into people) and from using lifts that help workers reach higher shelves. Often these workers are not trained properly on this equipment.

There is also one big thing that many retailers have that exposes both workers and customers to injury. That is crowded aisles. This results in injuries from people bumping into shelves all of the time. It can cause an improperly stacked item to fall on you. It can also cause you to trip and fall as you try to avoid something or someone.

And of course at these stores, because of hundreds of people coming in and out, there are a lot of spills and wet floors. This results in many arm, leg, back and wrist injuries due to slip and falls.

We haven’t even touched on puncture wounds, customer violence and the thousands of repetitive lifting injuries that occur every year.

What An Injured Retail Worker In Illinois Needs To Know

Illinois workers’ compensation laws protect you if you are hurt on the job. Benefits include:

• 100% of your medical bills being paid. There are no co-pays or out of pocket expenses. If you do not have health insurance it does not matter when it comes to treating a work related injury.
• Payment for your time off work. If your doctor authorizes you off work due to a work related injury, you will get 2/3 of your average weekly wage tax free.
• Eventually you will eligible to get a settlement. How much your case is worth depends on a lot of things including the severity of your injury and any possible defenses the insurance company may have.