Workers with Ergonomic Injuries in New Jersey

Do you tap at a computer behind a desk all day or stock warehouse shelves eight to ten hours a day? Maybe you load and unload trucks early in the morning at the local supermarket. Jobs that involve repetitive motion, heavy lifting, and awkward postures drive workers to the doctor’s office after years of enduring strain, stress, and muscle or tendon pain. Ergonomic injuries often result from certain repeated bodily movements over time, directly resulting from your employment. In New Jersey, you have the right to claim medical care, wages, and other compensation from your employer’s workers’ compensation insurance. If you have developed a work-related ergonomic injury in Mercer County, Middlesex County, Burlington County, or anywhere else in New Jersey contact us today at (609) 528-2596 to discuss your case with an attorney who can assist you.

Understanding Workplace Ergonomic Injuries Across All Industries

Whether you do heavy lifting or office work, you may be subject to ergonomic injuries. These injuries cause stress, strain, and pain in the muscles, spine, tendons, and ligaments. The most affected areas of the body are the neck, back, shoulders, and wrists. So, when you type, sew, cook, cut hair, or assemble computer parts all day, you may be applying forceful pressure to grip and maneuver your fingers and wrists in awkward positions repetitively for hours. The compressed wrist tendons and nerves become inflamed, causing carpal tunnel syndrome, tendonitis, or trigger finger. Typists get a trigger finger, which freezes a finger or thumb straight or bent. 

Other occupations cause serious ergonomic injuries, such as epicondylitis or tennis elbow, an inflammation of the tendons attached to the elbow. Carpenters, butchers, plumbers, and painters overuse the muscles in their forearms performing their jobs and suffer repetitive motion injuries, like tennis or golfer’s elbow. Many jobs can cause neck, back, and rotator cuff injuries, primarily those involving heavy lifting, like warehouse, construction, and factory work. However, drivers, office workers, and painters can also get neck and back pain from repetitive motion and sitting for lengthy shifts.

Workplace Conditions and Factors that Create Ergonomic Risks

Job Demands

Workplaces that require certain motions or expose workers to environmental factors that contribute to ergonomic injuries. So, assembly line workers, bus drivers, and hair stylists do the same movements that increase the odds of tendonitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, and back and neck injuries. Sitting for hours or bending over people in salon chairs with scissors, hair dryers, and brushes can put strain on muscles, stiffen lower backs, and cause hand, wrist, and forearm pain.

Poor Posture and Body Mechanics

Additionally, awkward postures like twisting, bending, squatting, and reaching can cause injuries from strain on muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints that inflame the affected areas and cause pain. Frequent musculoskeletal misalignment can lead to injuries, such as rotator cuff tears and back pain. Thus, sitting in a chair that causes bad posture may lead to neck, shoulder, and lower back pain, including sciatica.

Physical Strain and Forceful Exertions

Heavy lifting or pushing are forceful exertions that can injure workers. Pushing or pulling heavy pallets or equipment can place pressure on the vertebral discs and lead to back problems. Moreover, picking up heavy boxes without proper form and weight distribution can damage knees, backs, muscles, nerves, and tendons.

Environmental and Equipment Hazards

Environmental factors such as vibrations, poorly designed workstations, and long hours without breaks can injure workers. Working with vibrating tools or equipment, like jackhammers, can damage nerves and place extraordinary strain on muscles in the arms and hands.

Lack of Support and Fatigue

Workstations that require employees to reach across desks to access files or other daily materials, chairs with no back support, and desks that are too low or high can cause musculoskeletal damage over time. Without breaks at any job, fatigued workers cannot give their muscles, eyes, and minds rest, adding to stress and strain.

Identifying Ergonomic Injury Symptoms Early to Prevent Worsening Complications and Chronic Pain

When workplace factors contribute to long- or short-term injuries, individuals may notice bodily changes that signal something is wrong. In the early stages of carpal tunnel syndrome, an individual may experience tingling and numbness in the affected hand or fingers, often spreading to the entire arm.

Pain, stiffness, and swelling are other symptoms that may appear early on to signal oncoming serious injuries. A sciatic nerve condition may start out as stiffness in the back that progresses into soreness, swelling, and radiating pain from the lower back down the leg.

Eventually, early symptoms that go untreated get worse. Inflammation and pain in the shoulder that limits movement may turn into a full-blown rotator cuff tear characterized by sharp pain with shoulder and arm raising movements. Back or hip pain that progresses to sciatica or worse can limit movement and functionality of the legs and inhibit movement.

Worse, chronic pain is the result of neglected early warning signs. Therefore, early detection and response by seeing a doctor can prevent worsening symptoms that require lengthier and more invasive treatment.

Securing Compensation for Ergonomic Injuries

Some employees may feel they cannot afford to take off work for pain, soreness, and stiffness. However, they may not realize they have legal rights to medical diagnosis and treatment, including rest and time off for rehabilitation.

Workers’ Compensation Benefits for Ergonomic Injuries

When the job demands or the working environment causes you injuries, you can access workers’ compensation benefits that pay for your medical expenses for your workplace injuries and your wages while you undergo treatment and recovery. New Jersey’s no-fault worker’s compensation laws allow employees to file claims for ergonomic injuries. They do not have to sue the employer and prove negligence to get medical and wage benefits while they undergo treatment. Employers with a certain number of employees must carry workers’ compensation for work-related injuries for just this purpose.

However, an employer does not have to provide workers’ compensation benefits until the employee reports their injury. Thus, the employee must report a work-related injury within two weeks to avoid delay in starting the claim process by law. Other time limitations may apply, so the employee should preserve their rights and claim by hiring a workers’ compensation attorney to guide them.

Third Party Liability for Ergonomic Injuries

When third parties cause your injuries from poorly designed chairs, defective equipment, or property owners who negligently maintain their property, you may have a claim for damages against the responsible parties other than your employer. You have legal remedies, whether your employer negligently failed to provide safety, training, or other protections or a third party caused your injuries.

Comprehensive Overview of Federal OSHA Guidelines for Ensuring Ergonomic Safety in the Workplace

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, regulates workplace safety practices and conditions. OSHA federal guidelines set forth the safety rules for occupations and enforce such regulations with inspections and fines. The regulations address employment risks and authorize OSHA to cite employers who violate the safety rules and expose employees to ergonomic injuries. In other words, employers must mitigate damages to workers.

Employers must follow OSHA guidelines to prevent ergonomic injuries by providing a safe work environment through periodic assessment, monitoring, education, training, and modifications to working conditions. In workplaces requiring employees to lift heavy objects, perform repetitive tasks, or sit for long periods, employers must review the work environment for potential hazards and assess whether adjustments or modifications are necessary to prevent injuries.

Workplace Hazard Assessment Requirements

An assessment may reveal the need for workplace modifications, such as standup desks, enforced breaks, ergonomically engineered tools to ease strain or vibrations, and equipment that removes some of the burden of heavy lifting.

Employee Training and Safety Education

Evaluating the workplace may also reveal the need for employee training and education about safer job performance methods. The employer is responsible for building employee awareness of ergonomic safety, including the proper way to lift heavy objects, avoid awkward positions, take periodic breaks, maintain good posture, and stretch to alleviate muscle tension.

Monitoring and Evaluating Safety Measures

Once new methods, tools, and equipment for safer job performance are implemented, the employer must monitor employee response, checking in with employees to assess whether changes are improving safety and whether employees understand and use the safer tools and performance methods.

Ongoing Safety Management and Employee Communication

Assessments, modifications, and monitoring are ongoing duties of the employer to ensure that the workplace remains safe to reduce ergonomic injuries. Moreover, maintaining a workplace environment where employees feel free to report their challenges and injuries is crucial to safety.

Speak With Our NJ Work-Related Ergonomic Injury Attorneys for the Solid Legal Support Your Claim Deserves

With over 50 years of experience, our skilled New Jersey workers’ compensation attorneys at Cohen & Riechelson regularly deal with the complexities of ergonomic injury claims and uncooperative insurance companies. We can help you meet deadlines, file your claim, and deal with insurance adjustors whose purpose is to minimize and find fault with your claim. For example, the insurer may dispute that your injury is work-related. Your medical records are open to discovery by the insurance company, so an adjustor may find something in your medical history that they attribute to causing your injury. An insurance company may claim a pre-existing condition caused or contributed to your injury, or a third party, not the employer, is responsible for your injury and damages. When you face challenges to your claim, our aggressive workers’ compensation lawyers will fight to prove your right to compensation.

We are committed to advocating for your rights through the law, presenting evidence, and arguing your claim when necessary. Our knowledge of third party claims in personal injury law and workers’ compensation claims for ergonomic injuries can ensure that you pursue all available remedies in New Jersey. Serving workers with ergonomic injuries in Hamilton, Lawrence, Princeton, Hightstown, Ewing, Robbinsville, Trenton, East Windsor, and other areas of New Jersey, we invite you to contact us today at (609) 528-2596  to discuss your ergonomic injury claim.