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Jones Act seaman and other offshore workers are often mistreated when they are hurt on the job

Way Too Many Offshore Workers Are Mistreated When They Are Hurt

   It is a simple fact of life and one that our law firm has seen too many times.

   A good, hard-working employee is injured offshore on the job through no fault of his or her own. The employee reports the injury. The company then either refuses to do an accident report, does a very quick but not very thorough accident report (or even an inaccurate report), and then tries to get the employee to write something or sign something giving away all their legal rights.

   Sometimes, the company will try to make the hurt employee sign something before they will get them medical attention, a totally improper (and probably unethical) way of doing business.

    We have even seen cases where dredge companies go to the hospital after a worker is injured and try to get the injured worker to sign papers giving away important legal rights while the worker is laying in his hospital bed on medication.

   Even if the injured worker can convince the company to provide medical care, often it will just be a quick exam by a company medic (not even a doctor) who will say the injury is a bruise or blister or some other minor issue. The medic then gives the injured employee some over-the-counter medication and orders the employee back to work.

   In more serious cases, some companies will provide immediate medical care.

   But they will provide the care through a company medical facility using company doctors. And those company doctors will be doing everything they can to save the company money and get the worker back to work before he or she is ready.

   It’s really amazing.

   There are medical facilities that basically do nothing but provide services for offshore companies and other industrial type companies. They make hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars off these companies.

Question: If the medical facility is making hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions of dollars off the offshore companies, whose best interest are they going to put first? Your best interests, or the companies?

   Of course they are going to put the companies’ interest first.

   This does not mean these medical facilities are dishonest or that the doctors are lying. However, medicine can be an art as well as a science, which means there are gray areas in medicine.

   If your case is a close call, and the choice is between saving the company money or providing a complete and full medical workup and follow-up care to you, many of these facilities are going to lean towards the saving the company money.

   Once the company has a “release to work” paper from the company doctor, even if you aren’t ready to return, they will pester you and bug you and bother you and call you and write you and demand that you come back to work.

   You know whether you are ready to return.

   When you are still hurting, and not able to do the hard work it takes to be an offshore worker, if the company makes you go back to work you may hurt yourself even worse. Or you may be a safety risk to your fellow workers.

   That’s why you want to make sure you are completely healed and better—both for your own health and the safety of your fellow workers.

   But if you don’t return to work when the company wants and on the company’s schedule, then you’re probably going to get fired.

    The company may say you “quit” by not coming back to work. Or the company may say you “walked off the job” because you didn’t come back.

    Really this is just a way where they can avoid responsibility for firing an injured worker.

    Offshore companies know that there are other workers who are ready, willing, and able to go offshore to make the kind of money that offshore companies pay.

    So if an employee is injured offshore, even if it’s not his or her fault, they may be out of a job really quickly.

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