Each and every company cannot claim to have Workers Compensation as a benefit for its workers. The most common criterion that does not qualify you to enjoy workers compensation is, if you are a casual labor. Many times a company may hire workers not as permanent ones but as ‘casual’. These kind of employees cannot claim the insurance of workers compensation.
Before you can understand how one becomes eligible to enjoy the workers compensation benefits, you need to get a grip of what the workers compensation basically is. It is an insurance given to any worker who gets injured due to some mishap at his work place and during his working hours. This has been present from thousands of years but has undergone a lot of changes in the rigidity of its rules and regulations.
Unlike previous times, when because of the high fees of the attorneys, it was difficult for meager wage earner workers to hire lawyers and fight the case for them, the present times have fantastic expert lawyers and law firms like Sheeley Law. This is a LLC run by Ann Sheeley, a resident of Rhode Island. She has acquired her license to practice in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The costly factor led many a times to a situation when the worker had to bear the double torment of the accident as well the expenses that had to be made for the treatment.
The first of the basic eligibility criteria is a very obvious one, your company should have the facility of the workers compensation. Only if it is present within the facilities of your employer, can you make a justified claim of the workers compensation. The employer also does not have much of choice if making this facility available to his employees. He too has to comply with the fact of a stipulated number of employees that is approved by the commission to acquire the workers compensation coverage. However, presently majority of the companies are registered to have this. In fact, if your company does not cover it, you could seek the help of a lawyer to find out why it has not.
The second criterion is, you must be an employee of that company and must not be under the casual labor category. The independent contractors are also not eligible to claim a workers compensation insurance, the designations of a computer consultant or free lance writer are to name a few. Even the volunteers of a company are not eligible to enjoy the benefits of workers compensation. However, if your state does allow volunteers like fire fighters to enjoy the workers compensation and you are still denied having it by your employer, then you should seek the help of Sheeley Law run by ace attorney Ann Sheeley.
The last and most important criterion is that the illness or injury inflicted upon the worker should be work related. It is absolutely necessary that the illness should have occurred at the time of work and because of the work.
Sometimes the last one is a little difficult to identify but none the less this is an insurance which proves to be a boon to workers all over.