Workplace retaliation is often understood in terms of termination, demotions, reduced hours, pay issues, or even professional consequences. However, workplace retaliation can sometimes take a more dangerous form, in which an employee is punished through unsafe assignments, ignored safety needs, changed schedules, isolation, or even increased physical demands. These changes in working conditions can create real, physical risks. As a personal injury lawyer can share, this is where employment law intersects with personal injury law.
Retaliation Can Change The Condition Of A Job
Employment law is not separate from injury risk. Retaliation from an employer can take many forms, but some may expose workers to physical harm. Employers can change the conditions of a position in many ways: more physical demands may be assigned; an employee is moved to a more dangerous shift; help or support may be taken away to isolate the person and make their job more difficult; proper equipment may be refused to be provided; breaks may be denied; the employee may be sent to unsafe locations; and the company may choose to ignore known threats from outside parties such as customers.
All of these examples may lead to serious injuries, such as back, neck, or shoulder injuries from lifting too much alone, falls caused by impossible deadlines that are being rushed through, vehicle crashes from unrealistic schedules, or even repetitive stress injuries caused by an increased workload.
Evidence That May Connect Retaliation To Injury
If you believe that you may have been physically harmed on the job, you will need evidence to prove that retaliation led to the injury. Keep as much documentation as possible along the way. When was your complaint filed? How soon after were your work conditions changed? Have you made previous complaints, or have others complained about the same thing and received the same consequences? These are a few questions that may be asked about your case, and they can all be addressed with physical evidence such as incident reports, videos/photos of the issue, documented complaints from others, and any sort of written instant messages or emails.
A retaliation case heavily relies on the timeline. However, as our friends at Cohen & Cohen can share, these cases have a lot of nuance. One thing to examine is the involvement of third parties. For example, if an angry customer attacks you at your place of work, was that due to retaliation, poor security, or something else? It might feel as though a complaint was made, a demotion happened, and then an angry customer hurt someone. However, all of this must be documented to prove the case, as companies can argue that a third party, such as a customer, interacted with the employee outside of work and that the issue occurred there.
Although these cases are very complicated, you should still seek legal help as soon as possible. A determined lawyer will investigate your case, collect evidence, and work to prove that the retaliation occurred and that it led to an injury. You will need to work with both an employment attorney and a personal injury attorney in a coordinated team for these kinds of cases, so it is best to reach out to a lawyer near you as soon as possible for help.
