Workers' Compensation
How does the cost of workers' compensation affect construction costs? Is it worth the time and money to have a strict safety program? These are both questions that construction companies have been asking for years. But before these questions can be answered lets look it the history of workers' compensation.
Construction is one of the most dangerous occupations. In the United States, the construction industry employs about 5% of the workforce but accounts for 11% of all disabling occupational injuries and 18% of all occupational fatalities (Accident, 1993). Using this statistic alone the need is apparent for a good system for workers' compensation insurance. Prior to workers' compensation legislation an employee had two choices for collecting lost wages and medical cost due to injury. They could either a) take whatever offer the employer gave them or b) sue their employer. The cost of litigation has always been high and mostly unaffordable to the common man. Even if the employee had the money to take his employer to litigation and found him to be negligent, the employer could often defeat the worker's claim under one of the three common law defenses: the assumption of risk doctrine, the fellow servant doctrine, or the doctrine of contributory negligence (Newman & Hancher, 1991). In addition to the difficulty of overcoming the common law defenses, the injured worker faced other problems in trying to bring suit against the employer. Filing suit often resulted in the injured worker's losing his job. The lawsuits were expensive and time-consuming. There was no guarantee that the employee would win the suit or would collect damages suffici ...