As an employee, you may be eligible for workers’ compensation if you suffer an injury on the job. You may even have grounds to file a workers’ compensation claim for a repetitive stress injury (RSI), which can occur in very low-labor work environments, such as content writing, accounting, food service and any number of other jobs where you repeat the same sequence of actions or motions many times.
If you hope to file a claim for an RSI, you must first determine whether or not you qualify to receive workers’ compensation at all. In some instances, workers such as subcontractors or employees of very small businesses may not qualify for workers’ compensation because their employer is not required to carry that coverage, or because they are not classified as employees.
If you do believe that you are eligible to file a claim under workers’ compensation, be sure to gather as much documentation as you can to establish the validity of your injury and the necessity of your claim. While RSIs are certainly real injuries worthy of proper care, some employers or insurers may question how work-related the injury itself actually is. The strength of your claim may rest heavily on your ability to demonstrate that the duties you perform as a part of your job actually contributed to or caused you injury.
In many cases, it is helpful to consult with an experienced lawyer who understands who to navigate the workers’ compensation system effectively. You may have a much stronger case than you think that you do, or you may deserve certain benefits you do not know about. An experienced lawyer also helps to ensure that your rights and freedoms as an employee remain protected as you pursue fair, well-defined compensation for your injury.
Source: Findlaw, “Can I Get Workers’ Compensation For Repetitive Motion Injuries?,” accessed Oct. 20, 2017
