Landscape Workers

Landscape workers face a variety of job hazards.  Insurance statistics document that most common injuries incurred by landscape workers are:

• transportation injuries (vehicular accidents)
• contact injuries (animal and insect bites, exposure to hazardous substances, allergic reactions, cuts, amputations, burns)
• falls
• overexposure to the sun

In my Georgia workers’ compensation practice, I have represented a number of landscape workers in most of these scenarios.  One of the issues that often seems to arise has to do with safety equipment.   Landscape work is hot, especially in the summer and site supervisors encourage their employees to complete tasks quickly, often without a huge amount of concern about safety procedures.

When an employee is injured, the employer will sometimes try to deny the claim on the grounds that the employee ignored “required” safety procedures.

Another issue in landscape cases often involves notice.  Landscape workers are often young and they are often foreign born without a great command of English or much knowledge about the workers’ compensation law.  I have seen instances where an injured worker waited and waited to report serious injuries because of concerns about losing his job, and the delay resulted in a controverted claim.

As I have discussed elsewhere on this site, if you are injured on the job, call me sooner rather than later to learn a little about the system and how a workers’ comp. claim could affect you.

Below I have republished an infographic made available to me by Bolt Insurance that graphically displays information about landscape injuries.

Via: Bolt Insurance