These days, in the coldest days of year, most area of China are snowing. This morning, our China lawyers was called into a client’s office for a meeting. Over the course of the meeting the question was raised by an employee of our client’s China company, stemming from a casual comment about the weather.
The employ told how she was walking to the office, and slipped on a patch of ice on the road.
Luckily our client’s employee in this case was not injured, but the employee wanted to know, whether if he had been injured, would the situation qualify as a as
work-related injury
under China law.
The situations that can be identified as
occupational injury
are set clearly in the
Regulations on Work-Related Injury Insurance
. According to this regulation,
work-related injur
ies are limited to situation in which an employee is injured at work during working hours, at the work place, or where the employee is injured while engaging in preparatory work or closing down work directly connected to the employee’s regular duties, before or after the standard working hours, in the workplace. A China work related injury may also be found where the employee is injured in by violence or in an accident in connection with performance of the duties of the employee during working hours in the workplace.
Outside the workplace, a work-related injury may be found where an employee suffers from an occupational disease contracted due to working conditions, or if an employee is injured during work related travel, or where the employee is injured in a traffic accident (or public transit accident) for which the employee is not principally responsible.
On this last point it is key to note that not every injury which occurs on the way to work qualifies as a work-related injury in China. If an employee slips on ice while walking, or falls into an open manhole while walking to work (these are seen more often than you might expect in China), this will not be covered as a work-related injury.
According to the Regulations, if an employee gets injured due to slip on his/her way go to or back from work, it will not be identified as work-related injured.