Georgia Workers Compensation Attorney Blog

Consumers will hit the stores tomorrow for Black Friday, when some of the best shopping deals of the year have traditionally take place the day after Thanksgiving. Our Georgia workers' compensation attorneys know that workers' in the retail industry probably dread this day more than any other because injuries and accidents won't be avoided unless employers take steps to prepare a safe work environment.

Employees are particularly at risk of Black Friday work injuries in Georgia and elsewhere because shoppers come by the thousands and make work environments overcrowded and unsafe. Sales blitzes also make customers a little crazy and violent for fear of missing out on a great deal which can not only put workers in danger but also other customers.

The Occupational Safety & Health Administration recently released guidelines for employers in the retail industry to follow in order to reduce the risk of work-related injuries during sales events or throughout the holiday shopping season. Employers should tackle crowd control management to induce a safe work environment in three phases: planning, set-up and day of event.

Planning
-Hire trained security or police officers for large crowd events.

-Assign workers to a specific area of the store and make sure you have plenty of staff on hand for the event.

-Provide a training seminar to employees so they know how to handle large crowds and can ask questions regarding safety or how to prevent injuries.

-Obtain needed permits or licenses from fire code inspectors as well as alert emergency services of the event.

-Place signage in visible areas that help customers know where to go or what store hours are.

-Prepare an emergency plan in case a dangerous situation arises during the event.

-Advise staff of the emergency plan and make sure they are aware of crowd management procedures.

Event Setup:

-Make sure barricades or rope lines are setup securely before the doors open.

-Keep barricades away from store entrances so that bunching does not occur in sales lines where customers are trying to enter the building.

-Have enough staff available to help with directions and guidance to certain lines.

-"Hot" sales items should be advertised as online sales only to prevent a mad rush of customers getting to the desired sale.

-Keep shopping carts gathered in one location rather than spread out all over the parking lot.

-Prepare pamphlets or flyers indicating where entrances, exits, and special sales items are located.

-Provide staff with communicative devices such as radios or cell phones to relay emergency situations.

Day of Sales Event:

-Have crowd control personnel in place before the doors open.

-Never place crowd control managers in the center of where crowds are entering. Position them along both sides of the line.

-If the store has reached maximum capacity, barricade or rope off the line until customers have left and there is more space available.

-Allow people with disabilities to enter a different location.

-Remind staff to be in constant communication with customers, as well as, other co-workers.

Retail employers have a responsibility to keep workers and consumers safe during large crowd events. Preparedness with crowd control management helps employers to reduce the risk of injury and provide a safe environment for everyone.

Continue reading "Black Friday Sales Events Put Retail Workers at Risk of Serious Injury in Georgia, Nationwide" »

The U.S. Department of Labor recently announced a newly formed Alliance with Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC-United). Our workers' compensation lawyers in Atlanta know that Alliances with the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) are meant to improve work environments and reduce the risk of injury in industries that oftentimes are hazardous unless safety precautions are put into place and employees are trained properly.

There are roughly 11.6 million people employed in the restaurant industry nationwide. Almost 30 percent of these full and part-time employees are under 20 years of age. For many, it is the first employment opportunity outside of chores at home and a crucial step in transitioning to adulthood. Young workers are prone to burns, lacerations, or falls at work in Georgia restaurants if they are not properly trained and the employer fails to take the initiative to continually keep the work environment hazard-free.

ROC-United, founded in 2008, has over 7,500 members and is a national organization focused on improving work conditions in the restaurant industry. The Alliance with OSHA will be geared towards presenting case studies so that employers and workers in the industry can learn lessons from previous dangerous situations. Fact sheets, health and safety booklets and suggestions for proper training will be provided to workers and employers to create awareness about burns, falls, cuts and other potential injuries.

It isn't abnormal for parents to fear when their child goes out into the workforce, especially at a young age. Up to this point the power to keep children safe has been in the hands of the parents but now you are relying on someone else. Employers have an obligation to provide a safe work environment for your child but the more knowledge your child can gain the better it will be for their own safety.

OSHA has developed an online tool to help parents and teens gain more knowledge about the dangers leading to severe injury or illness while working in the restaurant industry. Young workers are exposed regularly to electrocution, violence, strains or sprains, toxic chemicals among other hazards. A teen may take a job serving, working the drive-thru window, preparing food or in clean-up but what they need to be aware of is there are dangers in every facet of the job.

The following are potential dangers associated with specific job responsibilities in the restaurant industry:

Serving
-Strains or sprains from carrying heavy dishes or trays stacked full of food orders.
-Trips or falls from not seeing an object in your path or slipping on ice dispersed from a bin.
-Burns from touching hot plates or spilling hot drinks.
-Workplace violence exhibited by customers or employers making vocal complaints or belligerent comments.

Drive-thru window
-Hearing loss initiated by loud background noise from headsets.
-Inhalation of dangerous fumes from a car's exhaust system.
-Back and foot pain from standing on feet for prolong periods of time.

Cooking
-Eye or face injuries caused by oil splashes from scalding fryers.
-Fire hazards from working around open flames or grease traps that aren't emptied.
-Heat exhaustion or heat illness from working in extreme hot temperatures for long periods of time.

Clean-up
-Slip and fall injuries from walking in freshly mopped wet areas or grease spills left on the floor.
-Electrocution from open wires or worn electrical cords.
-Exposure to hazardous chemicals often found in cleaning products like ammonia, detergents, or soaps.

Young workers are at risk of so many potentially dangerous injuries so help keep them safe by teaching them to be responsible and ensuring their employer trains them properly.

Continue reading "Workers at Risk of Burns, Cuts and Falls in Atlanta Restaurant Industry" »

We noted in a previous post on our Georgia Workers' Compensation Attorney Blog that several industries nationwide marked an increase in workplace fatalities in 2010, including private mining and law enforcement. Assaults and violence in Georgia workplaces accounted for the highest number of occupational deaths in our state last year.

Atlanta work injury and illness lawyers understand that employers find it challenging to keep employees from getting injured at work, but employers have obligations to keep workers safe.

One area that needs improvement by all employers nationwide is recordkeeping. In a recent U.S. Department of Labor statement, Secretary Hilda L. Solis indicated that accurate records of employee injuries and illnesses can not only help identify and fix systematic issues in the workplace but it can also help employees not to fear consequences of losing their job if they report an incident at work. In this economy when jobs are hard to find, employees may be keeping their lips sealed for fear of being let go from their duties.

Georgia employees need not fear losing their job when reporting an accident at work. Getting sound advice from an experienced workers' compensation attorney may ease the stress if you are injured at work or come into contact with a hazardous chemical or substance while on the employer's watch.

We are also aware of the 2010 occupational injury and illness summary recently released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the numbers aren't good. As a matter of fact, they virtually remained unchanged from 2009 reporting more than 3 million nonfatal illnesses and injuries in the private industry sector.

Some interesting findings from the 2010 summary:

-Injuries are much more predominant in the private industry sector workplace than illnesses with a 95 to 5 percent ratio of occurrences.

-More than 1.5 million of the nearly 3.1 million private industry illness and injury cases reported were critical enough to require a job transfer, restricted duties or missed time from work.

-DART cases (those requiring lost time from work, a job transfer or limited duties at work) occurred at a rate of 1.8 cases per 100 full-time equivalent employees in 2010, which was the same as those reported the previous year.

-Non-DART cases in 2010 (those considered less severe and not requiring one of the three scenarios listed above) occurred at a rate of 1.7 cases per 100 full-time employees, which was slightly less than the 1.8 reported in 2009.

-Small work establishments are classified as 10 employees or less and mid-size establishments employ anywhere from 50 to 249 employees at a time. When comparing private industry work sites that reported the most cases of illnesses and injuries, mid-size establishments reported the most cases in the private industry sector and small establishment reported the fewest number of cases.

-The service-providing industry reported 2.2 million occupational injuries, which equates to roughly a little more than 75 percent of the injuries in the private sector for 2010. The goods-producing industry reported the next highest number of recordable injury cases in 2010.

-The goods-producing industry reported 29.1 illness cases per 10,000 full-time workers in 2009. In 2010, the incidence rate grew to 31.8 and accounted for 36 percent of all illness cases recorded at work in any industry.

-Of all the goods-producing industries, the manufacturing industry was the highest sub-sector to report illness cases in 2010. The 2010 incidence rate was 41.9 illness cases per 10,000 full-time equivalent workers.

-Local and state government employees reported 5.7 illness and injury cases per 100 full-time workers or approximately 820,300 cases overall in 2010.

-Approximately 4 out of every 5 illnesses and injuries in the public sector in 2010 were local government workers. The incidence rate was significantly higher for local government workers in 2010 than state government workers at 6.1 cases to 4.6 cases per 100 full-time employees respectively.

Continue reading "Accurate Recordkeeping Can Help Fix Workplace Safety Issues in Georgia" »

We posted previously on our Georgia Workers' Compensation Attorney Blog that there were 4,500 work-related deaths in 2010. Translation: work accidents in Georgia and nationwide are killing workers at a rate of 3.5 per 100,000 full-time equivalent employees on average, and roughly 12 workers are losing their lives every single day while at work.

According to U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics 2010 Workplace Illness and Injury report recently released, employers are reporting illness and injuries pretty frequently too. In 2010, there were almost 3.1 million illnesses and injuries reported among private industry employers that did not result in fatality.

Our Workers' Compensation attorneys in Atlanta can't help but wonder how many workplace injuries or illnesses go unreported because an employee is either scared to report, thinks an injury is minor and doesn't need reporting, or employers try to cover up an illness or injury so they can continue to exhibit an impeccable record. We urge workers to always report or get medical attention for work injuries, no matter how insignificant they may seem. You never know what can come from these health issues weeks, months or even years down the road.

We find these key findings worth mentioning:

-In 2009, the incidence rate of cases per 100 full-time equivalent employees was 3.6. In 2010, there was a slight improvement to 3.5 cases per 100 workers.

-Total recordable cases with regard to incidence rates combining illness and injuries for private industry job sites declined significantly.

-Healthcare and social assistance employees recorded a rate of 5.2 cases per 100 full-time employees for illnesses and injuries in 2010. This was a slight improvement from the 2009 rate of cases, which was 5.4. Interestingly, we note health care and social assistance was the only private industry sector that reported more job growth and hours worked in 2010 than in 2009.

-The manufacturing industry reported 4.3 cases per 100 full-time employees in 2009. In 2010, the rate of cases increased to 4.4. The manufacturing industry was the only private industry sector to show an increase in incidence rates from one year to the next when reporting illness and injuries. This likely is a result of fewer hours worked rather than fewer illness and injury cases being reported.

-There was a 7 percent decrease in total recordable cases in the private construction industry sector in 2010. The incident rate changed from 4.0 cases per 100 full-time equivalent workers in 2010 from 4.3 in 2009. Specialty trade laborers showed a similar decrease reporting 4.3 cases in 2010, which was a .3 decrease from the previous year. We surmise that the decrease in specialty trade contractors had much to do with the overall decrease in the private construction industry.

-State and federal government workers reported incidence rates of 5.7 cases of illness and injuries per 100 full-time equivalent employees. There are over 18 million workers in the national public sector.

-The incidence rate for illness cases overall showed minimal change from 2009 to last year but poisoning was one category that reported an increase. There were 3 reported cases of poisoning for every 10,000 full-time employees in 2010.

Continue reading "Reportable Illnesses and Injuries at Work a Concern for Workers' Compensation Lawyers in Atlanta, Statewide" »