Shoulder injury from repetitive lifting, boss says it's just wear and tear
I've been working at a distribution warehouse over near Greenville for about eight years now, mostly doing order picking which means I'm lifting boxes anywhere from ten to fifty pounds all day long, thousands of reps a week. For the last year or so my right shoulder has been getting progressively worse—at first I thought it was just getting older but now it's to the point where I can't raise my arm above my head and I wake up in the middle of the night from the pain. My doctor says it's a torn rotator cuff with some arthritis setting in and that it's almost definitely from the repetitive nature of my job. When I brought up filing a workers comp claim my boss basically laughed and said good luck proving it's from work because "everyone gets sore shoulders as they get older" and that it's not like I fell off a ladder or had one specific accident they could point to. That conversation has been stuck in my head ever since and now I'm second-guessing whether I even have a case. I know repetitive stress injuries are supposed to be covered but I also know insurance companies love to argue that it's just normal wear and tear or some pre-existing condition. A family friend who used to work in HR told me that cases like mine come down to having the right medical evidence and someone who knows how to present it, and she said I should find an injured worker attorney Greenville NY who deals with these slow-onset injuries because trying to fight it alone would be a nightmare. I guess I'm just wondering if anyone here has actually gotten workers comp approved for something that built up over years rather than a single incident, and how much of a fight it ended up being. I don't want to waste time chasing something that's doomed from the start but I also can't afford to just let my shoulder keep getting worse without any help.
