Tag Archives: gender equality

Nebraska women account for majority of work injuries reported in state

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Leaning in is harder after a work injury.

2017 marked a dubious milestone for women’s equality in Nebraska as women accounted for at least 52 percent of the 37,391 injuries reported by employers to the Nebraska Workers Compensation Court through the First Report of Injury form according to the annual report published by the court.

This figure should be taken with a few grains of salt. 2017 could just be an outlier.  The percentage of First Reports of Injury filed on behalf of women in proportion to total injuries has steadily increased since 2007, but 2017 represented an unprecedented increase in the number of women employees who had First Reports filed on their behalf. The decrease in the number of men who had employers file First Reports on their behalf was nearly as unprecedented.

Court officials also state the numbers could be skewed by the fact that gender is not a mandatory reporting item and that reported injury numbers for a particular year tend to vary from year to year because of late reporting and other factors.

There are other reasons that first report of injuries aren’t a completely reliable measure of the number of actual injuries. A report doesn’t mean that an employee was injured. Not all employers report injuries to the court either. Even if an employee was injured and an employer files a report with the court, that doesn’t mean the injury caused any substantial harm to the employee. In 2017, only 1053 petitions or lawsuits were filed in the Nebraska Workers’ Compensation Court.  Roughly another 700 claims were formally settled without litigation.

Women accounted for 3 of 41 workplace deaths reported to the court in 2017, so men still comprise a large majority of the most serious workers compensation claims.

But the numbers quantify a truth about workers’ compensation and the workforce in general. Women’s participation in the workforce is increasing while men’s participation is decreasing.  Workers’ compensation is still often thought of as “workman’s compensation.” Images of workers’ compensation often include men in hardhats. Men in blue collar jobs like construction and truck driving do get hurt on the job. But women also work in traditionally male jobs like construction and truck driving. Injuries are also common in more gender-neutral sectors like retail, food service and manufacturing as well as in traditionally female jobs like nursing.

Future reports by the Nebraska Workers’ Compensation Court may show the injury numbers from 2017 to inaccurate or an outlier, but women will continue to suffer a substantial number of workplace injuries. 

The offices of Rehm, Bennett, Moore & Rehm, which also sponsors the Trucker Lawyers website, are located in Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska. Five attorneys represent plaintiffs in workers’ compensation, personal injury, employment and Social Security disability claims. The firm’s lawyers have combined experience of more than 95 years of practice representing injured workers and truck drivers in Nebraska, Iowa and other states with Nebraska and Iowa jurisdiction. The lawyers regularly represent hurt truck drivers and often sue Crete Carrier Corporation, K&B Trucking, Werner Enterprises, UPS, and FedEx. Lawyers in the firm hold licenses in Nebraska and Iowa and are active in groups such as the College of Workers’ Compensation Lawyers, Workers' Injury Law & Advocacy Group (WILG), American Association for Justice (AAJ), the Nebraska Association of Trial Attorneys (NATA), and the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA). We have the knowledge, experience and toughness to win rightful compensation for people who have been injured or mistreated.

This entry was posted in gender equality, Nebraska, women, Workers Compensation and tagged , , , .

Ranked No. 44: As ‘Nice’ as it Gets for Women in Nebraska?

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Nebraska recently changed its tourism brand from the stalwart of “Nebraska … the good life” to “Visit Nebraska. Visit Nice.” However, the wage gap for women in this state is neither nice nor contributing to “the good life” for women and their loved ones in this state.

In all but three of Nebraska’s 93 counties, the percentage of women between ages 25 to 54 who work is well above the United States’ national average, according to an American Community Survey featured recently in an article in The New York Times by Gregor Aisch, Josh Katz and David Leonhardt. This is positive information, particularly when you take into account that places with low levels of female employment have a lot of overlap with high-poverty geographical areas of the United States. 

I was initially encouraged by these numbers. It’s definitely a good thing to have high employment in our state. It’s no secret that Nebraskans can appreciate hard work. That must be part of what they are talking about when they said “the good life.”

However, this encouragement waned considerably when I also noted that a study from the National Women’s Law Center using 2013 data found that Nebraska (again, among the states with the highest percentages of working women in the entire nation) is also ranked as number 44 out of the 50 states and Washington, D.C., for wage gaps between median male and female earnings.  Forty-four. That puts our great state in the top ten worst states for this disparity. The data showed that full-time, year-round working women in Nebraska are paid, on average, 74.1 cents per every male-earned dollar. This is compared to the national average of 78.3 cents and the No. 1 spot, Washington, D.C., at 91.3 cents.     

Nebraska is saturated with hard-working women, so why do women’s wages appear to not reflect this? Why are Nebraska’s working women earning nearly $1,000 less per month than Nebraska’s working men? Why do Nebraska’s working women have to work more than 16 months to earn what Nebraska’s working men earn in 12 months? It doesn’t seem fair that states with fewer women out working for a living actually rank higher.

To be clear, these numbers do not necessarily show that women in Nebraska are systematically paid less for the same work as men (although this is certainly a nationwide issue). This is not the situation the Equal Pay Act (EPA) was necessarily designed to address. The EPA prohibits wage discrimination “between employees on the basis of sex … for equal work on jobs the performance of which requires equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions.” 29 U.S.C. §206(d)(1). The numbers in this study are based on median earnings for full-time year-round workers, regardless of occupation.

Even so, again, the percentage of female workers in Nebraska is well above the national average. According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, women in America make up nearly half the workforce. In 4 out of 10 families, they are the equal, if not main, earner. They are now more educated than men, earning more college and graduate degrees. The many reasons we may present to explain why women earn less apply in every state, not just Nebraska. Yet, here we are, living “the good life” at number 44. And that reality isn’t very “nice” in Nebraska or anywhere else. 

The offices of Rehm, Bennett, Moore & Rehm, which also sponsors the Trucker Lawyers website, are located in Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska. Five attorneys represent plaintiffs in workers’ compensation, personal injury, employment and Social Security disability claims. The firm’s lawyers have combined experience of more than 95 years of practice representing injured workers and truck drivers in Nebraska, Iowa and other states with Nebraska and Iowa jurisdiction. The lawyers regularly represent hurt truck drivers and often sue Crete Carrier Corporation, K&B Trucking, Werner Enterprises, UPS, and FedEx. Lawyers in the firm hold licenses in Nebraska and Iowa and are active in groups such as the College of Workers’ Compensation Lawyers, Workers' Injury Law & Advocacy Group (WILG), American Association for Justice (AAJ), the Nebraska Association of Trial Attorneys (NATA), and the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA). We have the knowledge, experience and toughness to win rightful compensation for people who have been injured or mistreated.

This entry was posted in Government, Legislation, Nebraska and tagged , , , .

Is It Really WorkMAN’s Compensation or Workers’ Compensation?

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I often hear my clients refer to their work-injury claim by the antiquated term, “workman’s compensation.” This was formerly the common vernacular when referring to a work-injury claim. Now however, most – if not all – jurisdictions have adopted the more gender-neutral term “workers’ compensation.”

Why the change? While one would have a strong argument that the change reflects the new age of political correctness, an equally compelling case can be made that the change was merely to reflect the increasing numbers of work injuries suffered by women. When compared to the times when workers’ compensation laws were initially enacted, more and more women have moved into industrial jobs. Of course, it naturally follows that as women move into more dangerous and laborious jobs, more women are going to be injured on the job.

For example, in Nebraska 42.7% of all reported work injuries were to women, according to the Nebraska Workers’ Compensation Court Statistical Report For Injury Years 2003 – 2012.  So, while I certainly understand when my clients say “workman’s compensation,” once in a while I jokingly remind them that all injured workers are covered, regardless of their gender. 

The offices of Rehm, Bennett, Moore & Rehm, which also sponsors the Trucker Lawyers website, are located in Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska. Five attorneys represent plaintiffs in workers’ compensation, personal injury, employment and Social Security disability claims. The firm’s lawyers have combined experience of more than 95 years of practice representing injured workers and truck drivers in Nebraska, Iowa and other states with Nebraska and Iowa jurisdiction. The lawyers regularly represent hurt truck drivers and often sue Crete Carrier Corporation, K&B Trucking, Werner Enterprises, UPS, and FedEx. Lawyers in the firm hold licenses in Nebraska and Iowa and are active in groups such as the College of Workers’ Compensation Lawyers, Workers' Injury Law & Advocacy Group (WILG), American Association for Justice (AAJ), the Nebraska Association of Trial Attorneys (NATA), and the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA). We have the knowledge, experience and toughness to win rightful compensation for people who have been injured or mistreated.

This entry was posted in Workers' Compensation and tagged , , .