Flu season is in full swing, and all it takes is one sniffling coworker to infect the whole office. If it’s clear you picked up the seasonal flu from Janice in the next cube over, it stands to reason that you should be able to file for workers’ compensation, right? After all, you picked up the condition during work hours while performing your employee duties.
Unfortunately, it’s not that simple, even if you can prove that the seasonal flu was caught at the office. That doesn’t mean you’re out of luck, though. Below, we take a closer look at how Minnesota handles flus and illnesses on the job as it pertains to workers’ compensation.
Compensation For Illnesses At Work
When it comes to sicknesses and the Minnesota workers’ compensation system, the law breaks down into two defined categories – ordinary diseases and occupational diseases. Here’s how each is defined by the law:
- An ordinary disease is one to which the general public is equally exposed to outside of the line of employment. This means that even if you are very sure you caught the flu at the office, odds are you won’t be able to get compensation since the general public would face a similar risk of contracting the disease, especially during flu season.
- Occupational diseases are diseases “particular to the occupation.” There isn’t a clear definition of “particular to the occupation,” but essentially this means that your risk of contracting the disease is much higher than the average person, due to your line of work.
We’ll give two examples to help clarify. Even if your entire office is sick and the boss makes everybody come in, you wouldn’t be able to file for workers’ compensation if you catch a cold by the end of the day, since it’s likely that the cold is going around town, and others who don’t work at your office are also at a high risk for coming in contact with a person with the flu.
Conversely, let’s face you are a stewardess for Continental Airlines and one of your flights takes you to Tokyo, where they are dealing with a bird flu epidemic. You end up catching the disease and are forced to miss work. In this instance, since your line of work directly influenced you catching the condition, and the general public in Minnesota is not at an increased risk of catching the condition in their everyday life, you could file for workers’ compensation.
Filing For Illness-Related Workers’ Compensation
Hopefully the above examples help give you an idea of the circumstances that would allow a person to be eligible for illness-related workers’ compensation claims in Minnesota. We also want to highlight that we are only talking about flus or viruses that go around the office. If you pick up an illness from asbestos, chemical exposure or toxic fumes, speak to a workers’ compensation lawyer right away because you are entitled to compensation for these types of illnesses.
If you believe you have contracted an illness at work that would be compensable under the law, be sure to report it to your employer right away. After that, contact a workers’ compensation lawyer and get a medical diagnosis from a doctor. Once you’ve been diagnosed, your lawyer can explain how they’ll go about filing a claim should they believe you’re dealing with an occupational condition.
For more information about occupation diseases and workers’ compensation, reach out to Hey Workers today.
