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Here's a dicey little controversy. According to the Huffington Post, Associate Blog Editor, David Weiner, McDonald's Corp. is "McScrewing" a hero out of money. The short story is that Nigel Haskett, a McDonald's employee from Little Rock, Arkansas, leaped to the help of a woman who was being abused by a man in the Golden Arches® restaurant causing him severe injuries. McDonald's is now denying him worker's Compensation coverage for his medical bills. Their claim is that his injuries were not sustained in the act of carrying out his job which is the purpose of worker's compensation insurance. Mr. Weiner claims this is unfair. McDonald's claim is that they train their employees to stick to procedure and that means calling the police in such instances not getting directly involved. In acting against their policy he possibly endangered himself, other people, and the very victim he was trying to help.
Sorry, Mr. Weiner, but McDonald's Corp. is making a good decision here. Mr. Haskett was not acting in his own or the restaurant's best interest. In so doing, he should not be covered by worker's compensation as harsh as they may sound. This doesn't change the fact that, for purely public relational reasons, the chain should probably pay his medical bills. Of course if we had a nationalized health care plan all of this would be moot as there would be no worker's compensation insurance and so on. Anyway, it's very important for people who read this to understand that worker's compensation insurance is very expensive and must be paid by companies that then witness huge premium increases per employee each time the insurance is used. It would send a very bad message to all company employees if they covered this claim. First, it would authorize employees to ignore company policy. Second, it would make grey what's really a black and white distinction right now. Worker's comp covers injuries caused in the performance of one's duties. It sound harsh in this case because Mr. Haskett was taking the noble, albeit very foolish, route in life. But, he put his own safety and that of others at risk. Suppose as he was struggling with the assailant, the assailant pulled out a gun and shot six people. Mr. Haskett is not hired to perform security and nor is he necessarily properly trained. More times than not, when untrained civilians attempt to perform the act of trained professionals, the results aren't so good. It's arguable that rather than being a hero, Mr. Haskett is a lucky fool. It's like an untrained person who performs CPR because they saw it in a movie and ends up breaking three ribs and dies from a punctured lung in the process.
Worker's compensation insurance is not the right solution for Mr. Haskett. If the McDonal's location where he worked wants to host a benefit lunch for him to raise money, that's up to the individual store owner. But other than that, he chose to violate store policy, to potentially injure himself and others, and did so without formal training in security. For all of these reasons and others, he should not be given a worker's comp. settlement, and Mr. Weiner needs to take his re-think his central argument before besmirching the reputation of McDonald's for this instance.