Most tradesmen with a job injury never report it. You ice the shoulder at night. You take the lighter tasks when you can. You tell yourself it will heal after this job.
Understand this before anything else. Filing a workers' compensation claim is not a lawsuit against your employer. It is an insurance claim on a policy your employer already pays for. You earned it the moment you clocked in. New York law makes it illegal for your employer to fire you or retaliate against you for filing.
The steps below protect your claim and your paycheck. For union members, they also protect the pension and annuity credits that ride on your ability to work. If you are reading this for a husband or wife who will not make the call, you can help with these steps today.
Recent Results
$26,500,000
For an operating engineer seriously injured in a car wreck
$24,750,000
For a union laborer who suffered a double leg amputation
$9,500,000
for an elevator apprentice struck by the cab
Step One: Tell Your Employer in Writing Within 30 Days
New York gives you 30 days from the date of injury to notify your employer under Workers' Compensation Law § 18. Tell the foreman, the super, or the office, and put it in writing. A text message counts. An email counts. What matters is a record with a date on it.
Miss the 30 days and the carrier has a defense it will use. Late notice can sometimes be excused, but you do not want to argue about exceptions.
Repetitive injuries work differently. For conditions built over years of overhead work or kneeling on deck, the clock generally runs from when you knew or should have known the condition was work related. The clicking knee and the shoulder that will not heal are injuries under the law, not just age. Report them the same way you would report a fall.
Step Two: Get Medical Care and Say It Happened at Work
See a doctor authorized by the Workers' Compensation Board. Tell that doctor the injury happened on the job. Say it plainly and make sure it goes in the record. A medical file that never mentions work is the single most common hole we see in disputed claims.
Do not run the bills through private health insurance or the union fund to keep the injury quiet. Workers do this to avoid attention, and it backfires. Private insurance can later deny the bills as work related. The comp carrier will then point to the record and say the injury never happened at work. You end up fighting both.
Tell the doctor every symptom, every body part, every visit. The part you leave out because it seems minor is often the part that ends up needing surgery. If your spouse goes to the appointment, have them write down what the doctor said. That note helps later.
Step Three: File Form C-3 With the Board Within Two Years
The claim itself is Form C-3, Employee Claim, filed with the New York State Workers' Compensation Board. You can file it online, by phone, or on paper. The deadline is two years from the date of the accident under Workers' Compensation Law § 28. Do not wait anywhere near that long. File within days of the injury if you can.
Your employer reporting the accident is not the same thing as you filing a claim. The employer files its own report. The C-3 is yours. Workers assume the company handled it because the company promised to take care of them. Months later, there is no claim on file. That promise is not a claim, and it is not enforceable the way a claim is.
On a union job with an ADR program, the forms and the doctors may differ. The underlying rights do not. What your ADR program actually is walks through that machinery and what the packet does not tell you.
What Comp Actually Pays
Comp pays your medical care for the work injury with no copays, plus lost wage benefits. The wage benefit is two thirds of your average weekly wage, multiplied by your degree of disability, up to a state maximum that adjusts each July. For a tradesman earning union scale, the cap often means comp pays well below your real take-home.
That gap is one reason the third-party case exists. Comp pays nothing for pain and suffering. It pays nothing for lost pension accrual, annuity contributions, or the family medical coverage that disappears when your hours stop. For a union member a few years short of full pension credits, the comp check does not touch the real loss. Any recovery has to be built around the lifetime picture, not the wage stub.
The Fear That Keeps Workers Silent, and What the Law Says
The reasons workers stay quiet are rational. Hours are everything. The foreman is watching. Nobody wants the reputation. But the law answers the biggest fear directly. Workers' Compensation Law § 120 prohibits an employer from firing or discriminating against a worker for filing a comp claim or testifying in a comp proceeding.
Remember the structure of the system. You cannot sue your employer for a work injury. Workers' Compensation Law § 11 makes comp the exclusive remedy against the employer. That trade-off is the whole point. Filing comp is using insurance, not suing anyone.
The social cost on a job can be real. I will not pretend otherwise. But silence costs more: no record, no benefits, and a career-ending injury carried alone. The unreported shoulder that finally tears two years later is the hardest claim to prove, because the proof was never made.
The Case Nobody at the Site Will Mention
Most New York construction injuries carry a second case that lives entirely outside comp. You may have a third-party lawsuit if an owner, general contractor, or another subcontractor was negligent. The same is true if the injury involved a fall or falling object covered by Labor Law § 240(1). That case can recover pain and suffering, the full wage loss above the comp cap, and the lost pension and annuity value. Under § 240(1), your own comparative fault is not a defense.
That lawsuit targets the owner or GC, not your employer. Filing it does not change your comp claim and does not sue the company that signs your check. Can I sue beyond workers' comp explains how the two cases run side by side. For a serious injury, the third-party case is usually where the real recovery lives.
If You Are Reading This for Your Husband or Wife
You can do the things they will not. Write down today what happened, when, where, and who saw it. Photograph the injury and the site if you can. Get them to an authorized doctor and make sure the words at work are in the chart. Help them send the written notice before day 30, and file the C-3.
A conversation with a lawyer commits them to nothing. It is a review of where the claim stands and what the deadlines are. The real question is not whether the crew talks. It is whether the family can absorb a career ending with no claim on file.
How Schwartzapfel Holbrook Handles Work Injury Claims
Schwartzapfel Holbrook represents injured workers across New York City, Nassau County, and Suffolk County, and we take these cases selectively. When we accept one, we run the comp claim and investigate the third-party case together from the start. Evidence on a job site does not wait. We build the damages case around the whole working life: the wage, the pension accrual, the annuity, and the credits still owed. We prepare each case as if it will be tried. Carriers pay attention to the difference.
