Injuries that make a worker not able to do their full work at their job are covered by workers' compensation in California. Californians are covered when their work caused the injury.

But, the California Division of Workers' Compensation does not count all injuries that happen while the worker is on the job and that lower productivity as injuries caused by work.

Work Situation Problems

Flaws in the work place, or in the way the work is done, can make it possible for a worker to get injured on the job. Workers' compensation pays for their injuries. The California Labor Code describes an injury that counts for workers' compensation as an "injury arising out of the employment." Basically, that means their presence in the workplace and their effort in work worked against them and ended in a failure and an injury. Employers do not have to be at fault for the work problems, and certainly do not have to willfully take serious risks with their worker's health and safety. Simple accidents count.

Workers can have a weakness that proves vulnerable and can even have part of the responsibility for the injury happening. The only thing that matters is the injury happened because the Californian was doing their job.

Injuries to artificial things the worker wears or uses on the job that the employer does not pay to repair or replace also are covered. Those things include dentures, hearing aids, eyeglasses, and any type of medical brace.

Single Failures

When work ability is lost during a single work event, the full injury that happened and made the worker have to go through a period of lowered productivity, or rest, produced the earnings losses that workers' compensation covers. By getting hurt by that single event, the Californian was kept from acting fully productive. A arm broken in a slip and fall on a dust covered floor counts. So does an eye burned by cleaning chemicals that tipped over on the shelf and spilled out into the eye.

Bad Work Burdens

Repeated exposures that wear out a worker, or that produce too much resistance for them to handle, and make an injury develop also produce earnings losses that workers' compensation covers. Resistance against work motions that builds up harm to the body over time is just as much an injury as one that happens in one single event. The work produced the injury is what matters. Arthritis that develops after a worker wears down the connective tissue in their shoulder and elbow joints over twenty years of leaning and grabbing products and machine handles counts. So does back strain in the lower back muscles.

An action that lasts over a period of time and that is physically traumatic makes the body useless, at least partially, just like repetitive motions do. Cleaning with cleaning products that corrode the skin and tissue until the deep tissue with the strong blood and nerves gets damaged at the end of the last shift in a month produces an injury covered by workers compensation. Heavy drilling that sprains a tendon in the wrist after four months of torquing the wrist on the job also produces a covered injury.

Stressed and Unfit to Work

Psychological injuries are on the list of covered injuries. The mental disorder that developed during stress on the job has to either make the worker unable to do some of their work, if not all of it, a lack of ability the Division of Workers' Compensation calls disability, or need medical treatment. The disorder has to get diagnosed by a professional using criteria such as the criteria in the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual for Mental Disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association. Becoming overly burdened and fatigued by work to the point the worker thinks work is a living death, a case of depression, can count as developing a mental disorder on the job.

The Injury Burden

Workers' compensation pays workers an amount that replaces earnings they lost when the work burden was too heavy. The injury took away ability they counted on and can not be replaced.

Source:

California Labor Code Sections 3208-3208.3 (2011).