If you work for a Virginia business, workers’ compensation insurance should, with very few exceptions, cover you for work-related injuries or illnesses. Virginia requires almost all employers to buy insurance in case of worker injuries.
The state’s rules for workers’ compensation insurance are not too complex to understand for companies doing business here.
Besides, nearly every job comes with its own dangers. When employers hire people to do them, they know their workers might suffer injuries.
Logging, fishing are deadly jobs and important to Virginia
According to a Virginia Tech publication, our state’s forests add about $23 billion to the economy every year and provide 145,000 forestry-related jobs. Logging is the most dangerous job in America, with a rate of deaths 28 times higher than the overall rate for American workers.
Virginia’s commercial fishing industry is the fourth largest of the 50 states and is worth one half a billion dollars. Fishing-related work is the second most dangerous job in America, with a death rate 22 times the overall rate.
Roofing, trucking and garbage/recycling all in top six
Virginia is struggling to find enough construction workers, including roofers, to meet the demand. The fourth most dangerous job in America, roofers work hard often in miserable weather, high above the ground and on steep surfaces. Falling or being hit by falling objects is common.
Garbage and recycling workers handle everything everyone else throws out, including the broken glass and exploding batteries we find too dangerous to keep around. They may work in (or on) moving vehicles prone to vehicle accidents. And since the garbage never stops, they work in the snow, rain, hail, heat and sleet in the fifth most dangerous job in America.
Truckers spend so much time on the road, they are bound to encounter every road hazard there is. Despite being sixth in the rate of deaths, trucking is first in the sheer number of deaths due to the vast number of truckers on the road.
First-line supervising is dangerous
The bosses at job sites, the ones many workers deal with all day, every day, are called first-line supervisors.
In a way, they have two bosses: the company wants the job done on time, on budget and without injuries, and workers need schedules, materials, equipment and conditions that make their jobs possible.
It is wise to remember that first-line supervisors in construction, extraction (oil and gas, mining, etc.), and landscaping have the ninth and tenth most dangerous jobs in America.
