CA Workmans Comp questions

[Melena]

Going to give a tl'dr of the situation here. 2 weeks ago my wife hurt her back at work doing a carryout since her employer was too cheap to have actual stockmen available. During the whole interview process, the LP officer kept pushing for her to drop the claim and essentially suck it up and ignore the fact she could barely stand up straight, let alone walk. Since then there have been accusations behind her back that she faked the injury, and now conveniently that she's healthy and full cleared, her hours have been cut from 25-30 down to 15hrs. Here are my questions

1. Does workmans comp cover you for lost wages if you have a second job? She just started a second part time job 2 weeks prior, so she lost about 6 days of work at the second job.

2. Is it illegal for an employer to try to force you to not file a claim?

3. How difficult is it to prove retaliation? On top of the hour cuts, the job they gave her for modified duty they kept sending her home early or tell her to not come in due to not enough hours being available. She just lost another 5hrs tonight when they told her to not come in even though she was cleared for full duty effective Thursday morning. She's also had people accuse her to her face of faking it and had one employee tell her they didn't want her there anyways.

Needless to say, i'm not happy as the lost hours have put a crimp in our budget as we are still paying off the last of our wedding. I went through workmans comp on my shoulder a few years ago and never went through the issues she's experiencing right now.

[synistar]

1) I don't think that work comp covers the 2nd job. Could always get a lawyer and file for damages if there was any medical visits/lost time at first job.
2) If it were reported to HR and they ignored the situation, then it sounds illegal. Just checked calOSHA and fished this up http://www.dir.ca.gov/dwc/InjuredWorker.htm

At issue of all this is the window you had to file the claim is small. just check calOSHA and try and go from there.

[aznmajiktaru]

Going to give a tl'dr of the situation here. 2 weeks ago my wife hurt her back at work doing a carryout since her employer was too cheap to have actual stockmen available. During the whole interview process, the LP officer kept pushing for her to drop the claim and essentially suck it up and ignore the fact she could barely stand up straight, let alone walk. Since then there have been accusations behind her back that she faked the injury, and now conveniently that she's healthy and full cleared, her hours have been cut from 25-30 down to 15hrs. Here are my questions

1. Does workmans comp cover you for lost wages if you have a second job? She just started a second part time job 2 weeks prior, so she lost about 6 days of work at the second job.

2. Is it illegal for an employer to try to force you to not file a claim?

3. How difficult is it to prove retaliation? On top of the hour cuts, the job they gave her for modified duty they kept sending her home early or tell her to not come in due to not enough hours being available. She just lost another 5hrs tonight when they told her to not come in even though she was cleared for full duty effective Thursday morning. She's also had people accuse her to her face of faking it and had one employee tell her they didn't want her there anyways.

Needless to say, i'm not happy as the lost hours have put a crimp in our budget as we are still paying off the last of our wedding. I went through workmans comp on my shoulder a few years ago and never went through the issues she's experiencing right now.

1: I don't believe workman comp covers you fully for the second job, usually how I learned it's done is that they total your salary for all your jobs and the responsible employer is supposed to pay some percentage of those wages; but that's not for all states since everything is state by state and fucking cali is like a whole different country.

2: Pretty sure it's illegal for them to try and force you to not file a claim but good luck proving it :\.

3: Same as 2, the burden of proof lies on your end and being that the employer is the employer, they can spin anything they want to make it work. The cutting of hours and sending her home is a starting point for investigation but if the employer can prove what they say they're sending her home for then it's tough luck; most cases this shit is stacked against you. I don't know if she can even qualify for hostile work environment, but even then that will take some time before you can file a claim for that and you must show you've tried to work it out (getting all of this on record/having witnesses etc is pretty tough too).

Most workman comps claim have a time frame you can file it, I think in florida it's up to like 2 years? but you'll have to check for CA since a lot of shit is different in CA from rest of u.s. -_-. If your wife has had any medical treatment/diagnoses done that shows she was unable to work due to the injury then that's always a plus since with that there's no getting out of the liability, otherwise it's her word against the employer and that will be hard to prove anything.

If you're serious about getting some kind of settlement out of this since she did lose time in her main job as well as her second, I'd say check up with a workmans comp attorney because if they're cutting her hours etc i'm sure there's something that could be done about it. Most important thing though is to keep records and track down old records of everything that's been done, otherwise it becomes more of a he said she said thing and that's never really going to get anywhere and you'll just end up losing money trying to go for it.

can also check out http://www.dir.ca.gov/dwc/faqs.html and http://www.dir.ca.gov/dwc/dwc_home_page.htm for CA WC stuff but honestly you're better off asking an attorney that specializes in this.

[BaneTheBrawler]

Idk about the legal crap, but once it's settled, I'd suggest she finds a new job as soon as possible. Sounds like that place is generally a shitty place to work anyway.