What is Workers' Compensation
What is Workers' Compensation?
Workers' compensation is compensation payable to a worker who suffers an injury or disease arising out of or in the course of the worker’s employment.
Under the
Return to Work Act 2014 (SA), a worker may be entitled to compensation for
- Medical and like expenses reasonably incurred as a result of the injury
- Weekly payments of income maintenance for periods lost from work as a result of the injury
- Lump sum compensation for any permanent physical impairment caused by the injury.
Most employers are registered Return to Work SA. Return to Work SA contracts out the management of claims relating to registered employers to one of two claims agents, Employers Mutual Limited (EML) or Gallagher Bassett (GB).
In some circumstances, a worker may also be able to make a common law damages claim.
Who is covered?
To be entitled to compensation, a person must be a worker.
Worker includes an employee in the common law sense and genuine independent contractors in prescribed industries:
- building;
- cleaning;
- transport;
- taxi; and
- entertainment
who meet criteria fixed by regulation.
Labour hire workers are additionally able to make a claim under the Return to Work Act. The labour hire business (business providing labour hire services to a host organisation) is ultimately the worker’s employer, and should be adequately insured for any workplace injury that a labour hire worker could incur at a host organisation.
When a worker is entitled to compensation
To be eligible for compensation a worker must have suffered an injury. Injury includes a physical or mental injury, a disease, disfigurement and death. Mental injury includes impairment of a mental faculty, but does not have to be a diagnosable psychiatric illness.
Generally, to be compensable, an injury must have been sustained either whilst working, or as a result of the employment.
Meaning of employment
Employment includes attendance at the workplace, at an educational institution for work-related education, at a place to receive medical treatment or recovery/return to work (rehabilitation) services, and journeys for work purposes
Generally speaking, injuries sustained whilst travelling to and from work and home, in which no duty of employment is being undertaken, are excluded. In recognition of this many occupational superannuation schemes and the Public Service Association have taken out insurance to cover their members for such injuries.
In the case of State of SA v Roberts [2018] SASCFC 25 the worker's injury was assumed to have occurred in the course of employment, whilst the worker was temporarily working at a rural location. This location was not the worker’s usual place of work, and the worker suffered from a disease as a result of mosquito bites whilst working at the rural location. The case established the principle that employment must be a significant (meaning important or influential) cause of injury.
