Although Illinois is very worker friendly, especially compared to some other states, there are some laws that don’t make sense or in my opinion really abuse the worker. One of those is on call laws.
It’s actually legal for your employer to make you be on call all the time. It happens to a lot of EMT’s for example. So for them to have a social drink or travel it can be impossible because they could be called in at any moment. I’ve heard similar stories with some of the package delivery companies and a lot of nurses and hospital workers too.
That’s all labor law which we don’t handle, but there’s a big work comp aspect to this to.
Can you get work comp benefits if injured while on call?
This issue recently came up and it involved a nurse who was in a car accident on his way into work. Normally those types of claims aren’t covered under the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Act. Generally speaking, you don’t get paid for injuries driving to work or home from work. There are some exceptions for traveling employees.
In this case though, the worker is entitled to work comp benefits. What happened is that he works in an emergency room. He was home, but on call, and was told there was a rush of patients and needed to report within one hour. So he jumped in the shower, then hopped in his car and was rushing to get to his hospital which is about 40 minutes from where he lives.
On the way in he got side swiped and sustained multiple injuries. It looks like he’s going to recover fortunately.
Because he was told to get in quickly due to an emergency situation, his employer was basically telling him to hurry. They benefit from his decision to rush to work. As a result, he’s not a normal employee driving in to the office. The actions of his employer put him at an increased risk of having an accident.
As a result this became a compensable claim that entitled him to benefits including 100% of his medical care paid for, compensation for his time off work and eventually a settlement.
It’s a somewhat unique case, but makes sense due to them telling him to hurry because of an emergency. In fact, had he been running to get to his car and popped his Achilles I would have argued that should be a case too. If he was fast walking from the parking lot and slipped on ice, that would be a case too. They wanted him to rush, so they don’t get out of paying benefits when he’s hurt in that process.
Injuries for on call workers are really fact dependent. If this happened to you and you want a free case analysis, please reach out any time.
