Sauk Rapids Workers' Compensation Law Blog

As an employee in Minnesota, you may sometimes forget that any job you do comes with a certain amount of risk. When it comes to sudden and unfortunate incidents in the workplace, Lindberg Law, P.C., can help dispell factual inaccuracies and guide you through these difficult times.

The first myth is that only those working in "dangerous" professions are at risk for workplace injuries. This is entirely false. All jobs come with their own hazards. Any time you work with heavy machinery, high voltage electricity, or even just tasks involving repetitive motion, you're putting yourself into a potentially dangerous situation. For example, office workers commonly suffer from repetitive stress injury or back and spine damage because of the constant lifting and bending they do. Workplace injures don't discriminate based on employment.

Minnesota residents may not always consider older workers when they think about workplace injuries. Being older can sometimes cause people to incur more injuries on the job, though, and they may be susceptible to more fatal injuries.

Older workers are more present in the workforce than they used to be. The Associated Press says that over the past ten years, 37 percent of older people are more likely to be in the workforce. Many of the jobs these people take on require some sort of physical labor. Since 2015, older workers have become 65 percent more likely to be involved in a fatal accident at work. Some of these injuries occur because of changes in a person's body as he or she ages. Some people may develop problems with their balance or experience hearing and vision impairment. Other people may have arthritis that can affect their movement on the job.

Spring is just around the corner, even if the recent weather makes it hard to believe. As you know, it will be more common to see construction in Minnesota once the weather warms up. Spring and summer means construction season for most states across the country, and this might also mean an increase in accidents, whether you work in the construction industry or are a pedestrian near worksites.

If it is your job to put up buildings or improve roadways, you already know that you work in one of the nation’s most dangerous jobs, as FindLaw points out. When construction season ramps up, you will want to be on alert for the most common accident types in the industry. Known as the Fatal Four, these include falling, electrocution, being struck by objects or being caught in between machinery or objects. When you observe safety measures on the job and know the risks, you stand a better chance of keeping yourself and your coworkers safe.

If you are a Minnesota worker whose job requires you to work on, in or near elevators, your risk of injury or even death is substantially greater than that of general elevator passengers. The Center for Construction Research and Training reports that approximately 17,000 people are injured each year in elevator accidents and 31 are killed.

Half of these fatalities are to elevator installers, repairmen and maintenance workers. Most of them, 56 percent, are due to a worker falling down the elevator shaft; 18 percent are due to a worker getting caught in or between the elevator’s moving parts; 16 percent are due to a worker being struck by the elevator or one of its counterweights.