New Yorkers take pride in their work. Day in and day out, they go to work and get the job done. But sometimes bad things happen; sometimes workers get hurt from on-the-job injuries. Sometimes the injury is minor, other times fatal.
In fact, fatalities happen more than most people might think. In 2013, for instance, nearly 4,500 people died on the job. That is 85 people per week, or 12 people per day. The industry most affected was construction.
Construction workers need to worry about four types of accidents in particular. These fatal four are falls, electrocution, getting struck by an object and getting caught-in/between. These four represented nearly 60 percent of the lethal construction injuries last year.
But death is not the only kind of harm that construction workers suffer. Other common injuries include burns, lacerations and injuries to the knee, neck, shoulders, back and brain.
New Yorkers enduring these and other injuries have legal rights that they may want to pursue. Pursuing these rights can be especially important for people hurt in on-the-job injuries because these kind of injuries typically result in long absences from work or even permanent disability. These conditions can produce serious financial difficulties for victims.
But while an on-the-job injury can cause serious financial hardships, New Yorkers injured on the job have ways to make the time off more financially manageable. One way is to seek workers’ compensation benefits. To see whether you qualify for workers’ compensation, you may benefit from discussing your situation with an experienced construction-injury attorney. Doing so could be the first step toward recovery.
Source: OSHA, “Commonly Used Statistics,” Accessed Nov. 11, 2014
