Tag Archives: Worker Rights

Legally Speaking – Afraid To File A Claim?

As a 25-year attorney in the field of Workers’ Compensation, I have represented thousands of injured workers and heard all kinds of stories — many involving workers who didn’t file a Workers’ Comp claim for one reason or another. Some of the most frequent reasons I’ve heard from workers who get injured on the job and don’t file a claim include fear of getting fired, or intimidation by a system that seems cumbersome and hard to navigate.

First of all, it is against the law for an employer to fire you in retaliation for filing a Workers’ Compensation claim.  You should know that Workers’ Compensation is a no fault system. In exchange for timely payment of medical and indemnity benefits, workers gave up the right to sue their employer.   These laws went into effect in the early 20th Century as a result of social reform and tragedy.  While every state in the nation has some form of Workers’ Compensation laws, they all vary in scope and date of inception.  In New York, the pivotal event that culminated in the passage of Workers’ Compensation legislation occurred in 1911 after the horror of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, where 146 individuals perished — some burned to death while others leapt to their deaths when they tried to escape the fire and found the emergency exits locked.  This was a preventable tragedy caused by unsafe work conditions and was a catalyst for…

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Walmart v. Workers in a Black Friday Showdown

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today’s guest post comes to us from Kit Case of Washington state.

The Nation Magazine reports today in their “E-Mail Nation” communication that Walmart has filed a National Labor Relations Board charge against the United Food & Commerical Workers Union alleging that the pickets are illegal and asking for a judge to shut them down, weeks into a wave of historic strikes, and days before a planned Black Friday showdown.  This also coincides with recent news reports that Walmart is soon expected to offer stock dividends to their shareholders and at a time when stock prices have been hitting all-time highs, in spite of an international bribery scandal that is still unfolding.

An excerpt from the recent The Nation article, by Josh Eidelson: 

Walmart’s letter to the UFCW accuses the union of “enlisting [workers] in orchestrated schemes to disrupt Walmart’s business operations by telling them that federal labor law protects their participation” in strikes that are in fact illegal, and thus could get them fired (the letter also alleges that the protests involve a range of crimes beyond those in the NLRB charge, including trespassing). A Walmart spokesperson drove a similar message home Sunday, telling CNN that if workers don’t show up on Black Friday, “there could be consequences.” The target audience for that statement, and for Walmart’s latest legal salvo, may not be the media, or the courts, or the UFCW, but the thousands of workers who want to see change at Walmart but have haven’t yet decided whether going on strike is worth the risk.

Read the full article on The Nation’s site, here.

 

UPDATE: Walmart has sent store managers a message to employees saying they could “get disciplined” for striking.

 

Image credit: 40 Years of Faulty Wiring.

 

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