Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by wool_gather 2855 days ago
> He was being paid worker's comp during this time. This certainly made a good impression on me.

Just to be clear here: this is required by law, not something that the company is doing out of the goodness of its heart. It's also a fraction of what one's normal wages would be, which I would say is a more likely explanation for the injured person's eagerness to return than that "he missed his coworkers".

> they wanted to make sure he was completely healed and made it clear that he shouldn't rush things

I won't fault them for this, as I don't have details like what/how serious the injury was. But often a better alternative to no work at all is to temporarily reassign the person to another role where their injury is not an issue (desk job of some kind, generally). This way the employee continues to get full or near-full wages.

EDIT: Also, forgot to point out that work restrictions are defined by a doctor who treated the injured person, not by the employer. They can get in serious trouble for forcing someone to work in excess of those restrictions. So again, not really a sign of benevolence.

3 comments

I appreciate you taking the time to explain this in more detail for me, I'm admittedly not clear on how this worker's comp stuff is supposed to be handled, thankfully I've never suffered any type of work related injury.

While I didn't mention it in my post my coworker was reassigned to less labor intensive duties once he returned to work. And from my understanding the doctor who treated him ok'd him to return to his normal duties but our direct manager had no problem with him taking longer in this less physical role.

I'm just adding this detail to paint a better picture but I think you've done a good job illustrating that this is the minimum that Amazon in required to do and they shouldn't be praised for doing what the law requires. I'm certainly not here to try and do PR for Amazon, just sharing my personal experiences.

Right, worker's compensation benefits are paid by an insurance company, not by the employer.
It is, but the cost of worker's comp insurance coverage for an employer is very closely tied to claims experience. If an employer has a track record of a lot of claims, their worker's comp insurance is going to be very expensive. So there's still an incentive for the employer to operate safely and minimize employee injuries.
Good points both, thanks for adding those details!
Actually, is it? Isn’t that a state by state thing? For the record I’m not positive but coming from an at-will State like FL that is also heavily favored to corporations, I am not certain.
Yes, I'm sure it varies from state to state, but the story specified CA, which does indeed have a legal requirement.