North Carolina Workers Sick With COVID-19 Deserve Workers’ Compensation!
North Carolina has been hit hard by the COVID-19 crisis, and public officials, government employees, and community organizations are doing everything they can to protect North Carolinians –to protect our communities. Frontline workers are the selfless heroes of this pandemic, putting themselves and their families at risk as they fight to protect us all.
For workers who contract COVID-19 on the job, we need to protect them against insurance companies who will stop at nothing to deny valid claims–and we need to acknowledge that the lack of personal protective equipment and the lack of available tests have made it even more difficult to know when someone has COVID-19 or when you are exposed. Preliminary analysis from workers compensation practitioners suggest workers will have to go through leaps and bounds to prove that they contracted COVID-19 at work. Instead, we need to show our workers that if they get sick, they will be protected by North Carolina and they will be taken care of.