Side Hustle Jobs-Working Multiple Jobs at The Time of Your Injury
If you have been injured in a job accident and are out of work, temporarily disabled, will you lose those weekly disability benefits if you have a side job, an internet related job, or a social media job?
Georgia law in workers’ compensation cases has a provision called “concurrent, similar employment.”
Thie means that if you had two (or more) jobs when you sustained an injury on one of them, if the other job was similar to the job where you got hurt, the wages from both jobs will be used to determine your weekly disability payments. If the two jobs are not considered similar, only the one wage will determine your weekly disability payments.
First of all, this is a horrible law. If your injury prevents you from doing both jobs, you should get paid disability benefits based on both of the jobs no matter whether the work was similar or not. However, that is not the law.
But in the case of Heaton Erecting Inc. v. Gierum, decided on February 13, 2024, the insurance company required to pay workers’ compensation weekly disability benefits refused to do so because the side job of the worker, although completely dissimilar, still brought in income to the worker while he was disabled. The insurance company further argued that even if the side job did not turn a profit, the worker still was not entitled to disability benefits because he kept working this side job while he was disabled from the job of injury. To me, this is a cruel and heartless position taken by the insurance company.
Fortunately, the Court of Appeals decided that the worker was entitled to weekly disability benefits because he was disabled from his primary job. The Court further held that the two jobs of the worker were dissimilar and therefore, not relevant to the case.
It seems to me that in these days of the internet, including social media, online influencers, etc., many people have a side hustle job. Those who are industrious enough, motivated enough and intuitive enough to find a way to make money on the side in this economy where inflation has destroyed people’s income, ought NOT to be punished if they find another way to make money on the side.
Hopefully, this decision will stop the argument of the insurance folks that a side hustle job reduces one’s disability benefits.