Articles Tagged with Boston worker injury

With marijuana now being legal in Massachusetts, some are questioning what will happen if workers are showing up for the job under the influence of marijuana. This is not an easy question to answer, since many consider the drug a medicine just like any other drug, according to a recent news article from Claims Journal.

For obvious reasons, the insurance industry and especially those companies that sell workers’ compensation policies in the Commonwealth are concerned about this issue, since marijuana was legalized in the 2016 election when voters approved that new law. As one might imagine, the workers’ compensation insurance companies do not want to pay benefits to an employee who was injured when he or she was under the influence of marijuana. Continue reading

Many publicly traded-companies value profits over just about anything else. Unfortunately, this too often means worker safety falls by the wayside. One of the ways companies work to increase their profits each quarter is to cut costs through a process known as efficiencies.

According to recent news article from Industry Week, companies and their CEOs and boards of directors should not put profits ahead of worker safety.  While this is certainly something with which everyone should agree, it should be noted that that this article was written by someone in the insurance industry, and that industry is likely more concerned with its own profitability. Continue reading

According to a recent news article from the Boston Globe, two construction workers were killed when a water line ruptured.  These workers were inside a trench cut into the street in Boston’s South End when the water line burst causing the trench to quickly fill with water.

One witness who was walking by at the time said it was a sudden very powerful rush of water that filled the narrow trench in just a few second’s time.  There were other workers who realized what happened and yelled that there were two men down in the hole at the time of flash flooding of the trench.   This trench was around 15 feet in depth at its deepest point. Continue reading

According to a recent news feature from CBS Boston, a construction worker was severely injured when he got his foot trapped in a cement mixer in Newton, Massachusetts.  Co-workers say that the injured employee was working around the machine when he slipped and his leg got trapped.

This was not a cement truck, but a smaller cement mixing machine that features a large screw or auger inside to mix the cement.  It was this auger that trapped his leg and was crushing it when another worker heard the screams and shut down the machine.  Continue reading

According to a recent news feature from the Boston Herald, a Chilean soccer fan who had been watching the international competition was arrested after he had allegedly hit a construction worker in Boston’s Ted Williams Tunnel and then fled the scene.

Police say that when they caught up with the suspect and pulled him over, he allegedly pretended to blow into the roadside breath test and then told the officer that his wife “looks like a toilet.” Continue reading