Services / Labour and employment
Hurt at work or away from it: two funds
The first question here is not how much, but which fund, because two statutes set different rates and conditions, and the line between them runs through a single phrase: arising from the work.
The line runs through the definitions
Section 5 of the Workmen's Compensation Act B.E. 2537 (1994) defines injury as bodily harm or an effect on the mind, or death, arising from the work, from protecting the employer's interests, or from following the employer's orders. Illness means illness or death from a disease arising from the nature or conditions of the work or from the work itself. These words reach further than many expect: they include an effect on the mind, and they include acting on the employer's orders.
The rates under section 18
Section 18 sets monthly compensation at seventy per cent of monthly wages in every case, the difference lying in duration. Where the employee cannot work, it runs from the first day for as long as that lasts, but not more than one year. For loss of bodily working capacity, it runs for the period the Ministry of Labour prescribes, but not more than ten years. For disability, it follows the type and period prescribed, but not less than fifteen years. For death or disappearance, the period is ten years.
The floor and ceiling that are not in the section
The last paragraph of section 18 provides that compensation must be no less than the minimum and no more than the maximum monthly compensation the Ministry of Labour prescribes. The actual figures therefore live in the ministerial notification, not in the Act. Anyone who works from the seventy per cent alone, without the ceiling, will overstate the entitlement where wages are high.
Where the injury is not from the work
Cases outside those definitions fall under section 64 of the Social Security Act B.E. 2533 (1990), which provides that where an insured person is injured or falls ill otherwise than from the work, they are entitled to loss-of-income compensation at fifty per cent of wages for a stoppage on a doctor's orders, not exceeding ninety days at a time and not exceeding one hundred and eighty days in a calendar year, except for chronic diseases prescribed by ministerial regulation, where it may exceed one hundred and eighty days but not three hundred and sixty-five.
Where these cases are won and lost
Because the dividing line is a question of fact about whether the event arose from the work, the evidence that decides it is the most ordinary kind: where and when it happened, what was being done, on whose instruction, and what the first record made at the time actually says. A medical certificate describing only the injury, without the circumstances, is rarely enough to settle the point.
PREPARE
What to bring
- The first incident record made on the day
- Medical certificates and the full treatment history
- What you were doing at the time and who instructed it
- Evidence of monthly wages, to compute the rate
- What was filed and the Social Security Office's ruling
QUESTIONS
Questions this raises
I was hurt travelling to work.
The section 5 definitions tie the entitlement to the work, to protecting the employer's interests, or to following the employer's orders. Travel is therefore neither automatically in nor automatically out; it depends on whether the journey formed part of the work or was made on instruction. The facts about the route, the timing and the reason for the journey are worth preserving from the start.
My employer never registered with the fund.
The duty to contribute to the fund rests on the employer, and section 18 places the duty to pay compensation on the employer when an employee is injured, falls ill or disappears. The employee's right therefore does not depend on whether the employer registered. What to do is report the event and assemble full evidence of the employment relationship.
LAW
The legislation
- Workmen's Compensation Act B.E. 2537 (1994), section 5
- Workmen's Compensation Act B.E. 2537 (1994), section 18
- Social Security Act B.E. 2533 (1990), section 64
ENQUIRIES
