Worker Compensation Workers' compensation programs and laws exist to protect employees who are injured while on the job. These laws are usually a feature of highly developed industrial societies. Workers' compensation laws are often only implemented after long and hard fought struggles by labor unions. There are often benefits available to dependents of workers killed on the job. Prior to statutory law, employees who were injured on the job were only able to pursue their employer through civil or torts law. In some countries like the United Kingdom this was difficult due to the legal view of employment as a master-servant relationship. Proof of employer malice or negligence was usually required, a difficult thing for an employee to prove. While employer liability was unlimited, courts usually awarded in favor of the employer, and did not take into account the full losses experienced by workers: medical costs, lost wages, and damages for loss of future earning capacity. Workers' compensation laws were enacted to mitigate litigation expenses for both sides and to eliminate the need for injured workers to prove their injuries were the employer's "fault." The first US law was passed in Maryland in 1902. In the next twenty years, many states followed. This system was formerly known as workman's compensation. In the United States most employees who are injured on the job have an absolute right to medical care for that injury, and in many cases monetary payments to compensate for resulting temporary or permanent disabilities.

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