Workplace Risks & Injury: Fear of Employer Misbehavior in Pennsylvania

Can an employer react when an employee record an OSHA complaint or a claim for workers’ compensation?

Conceive of the subsequent situation: an employee at a construction location in Philadelphia notices that some employees have not fall protection equipments while taking building material on the third floor roof, an abuse of occupational safety codes. He informs his manager who does not anything. The employee is worried that somebody will fall or trip and records an objection with the related state body in Philadelphia. The employer finds and terminates him.

Here’s one more, similar situation: an employee falls or trips at a workplace in the Philadelphia’ residential area. He records a worker’s compensation case to company by reason of a critical injury. The employer states that the accident took place because of the employee violation of safety codes, which is not right to an obligation. The accident took place as a consequence of the employer’s lack of care. After recording case for workers’ compensation, the employee gets a harmful performance report. As it proves, other employees who have recorded workers’ compensation cases have experienced similar, depressing treatment.

Even if above hypothetical situations may seem highly imaginative but doubtful, they are really pretty common. Here’s a look, why. A good number of employers in Pennsylvania offer workers’ compensation via an insurance policy. As a consequence, employers give an insurance premium for employee workers’ compensation. Once an employee records a workers’ compensation case, the employer raises the insurance premium. So, an employer has an economical bonus to make workers’ compensation cases decrease. A few employers truly pay workers’ compensation themselves, exactly from pocket. Such employers apparently bear a higher financial risk while an employee records a workers’ compensation case. Accordingly, while an employee records a workers’ compensation case, he may involve in penalizing tactics, for example:

• Terminating,
• Appointing to a lower position,
• Refuse to offer work benefits (i.e., overtime),
• Transferring employment duties, or
• Reducing working hours.

Protection with federal law

According to the federal occupational safety codes, employers are banned from involving in unfair or disciplinary acts. The law provides:

No one will release from obligations or in any way classify against any one because these employees have filed any claim or established or caused to be started any proceeding according to this Act or has proved or is ready to state under oath in any these proceedings or due to the practice by such employee in support of himself or others for any affordable right by this Act.

According to law, protected activities are:

• Giving an account of safety risks to the employer,
• Giving an account of a work about accident or injury,
• Recording a claim,
• Following a survey, and
• Taking the stand in an associated legal proceeding.

In Pennsylvania court case, it recognized and support an employee’s right to make an illegal firing activity against an employer wherever the employee was terminated for recording a workers’ compensation claim. The court decided that the law limits an employee’s lawful rights to record a workplace injury case against the employer.

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Emma swift is a freelance blogger and journalist who works alongside a team of accident at work compensation solicitors