When the employer is liable for a work injury
The Labour Code regulates the employer’s liability for work injuries in Section 269 as follows:
In ordinary life it generally holds that a person is liable only for what they caused themselves. The law, however, also knows cases where liability falls on someone who neither caused anything nor breached anything. That is exactly how it is with work injuries.
The Labour Code establishes what is known as the employer’s strict liability. That means that for the employer’s duty to compensate harm caused by a work injury to arise, it is not required that the employer breached any of its obligations.
Example:
An employee trips while working and breaks an arm, and so suffers a work injury. The employer is liable for the harm the employee has thereby suffered, without being in any way at fault for the fall and the resulting damage to health.
When the right to compensation arises
For the employer to be obliged to compensate harm from a work injury, the following conditions have to be met:
- the existence of a work injury,
- the occurrence of harm — which may be, for example, pain or a loss of earnings during the ensuing incapacity for work,
- a causal link between the work injury and the harm, that is, that the harm occurred precisely because of the work injury and not for some other reason.
Where these conditions are met, the employer is obliged to compensate the employee for the harm caused by the work injury.
When the employer is liable for an occupational disease
The Labour Code contains a similar rule in the same provision for occupational diseases:
A similar principle of strict liability therefore applies to occupational diseases as well — for the employer’s
liability to arise it is not necessary that the employer breached any of its obligations.
The conditions of liability are therefore:
- recognition of an occupational disease,
- the occurrence of harm,
- a causal link between the occupational disease and the harm.
With occupational diseases, however, the position is stricter for employers still than with work injuries. The Labour Code designates as the liable employer the one for whom the employee suffering from the occupational disease last worked under the conditions in which that disease arises.
Example:
An employee works for 20 years at company A doing work that strains the forearms. They then join company B in a similar position. After a few months they begin to have health problems with the upper limbs. An investigation follows and the occupational disease is recognised. The liable employer will be company B.
Is that always the case?
However strict the statutory construction of the employer’s liability for work injuries and occupational diseases may be, it does not apply without exception. In certain cases the employer may be relieved of it wholly or in part. We will look at those situations in the next posts.
