The short answer
Tell the employer the same day and put it in a message so there is a date on it. Get medical care that day and say clearly that it happened at work. Take photos, write down who saw it, and do not sign anything you have not read.
In the first hour
Stop working. Pushing through it is how a strain becomes a surgery.
Tell whoever is in charge on site, out loud, right then. Then send a message in the app saying what happened, when, and where. That message is the timestamp your whole claim will rest on.
If it is serious, call 911 and let somebody else handle the rest. Nothing on the list below matters more than that.
Before you leave the site
Take pictures while everything is still where it was. The thing that hurt you, the wider area, and your injury.
Write down the names and numbers of anyone who saw it. People scatter after a job ends and they are very hard to find later.
Get the employer's full name, the business name, and the site address written down. On a busy site, the person who hired you is not always the person who owns the job.
Get seen the same day
Go to urgent care or an emergency room. Say plainly that you were hurt at work, doing what, at what time. Those words go in the file and they matter later.
Do not wait to see if it feels better tomorrow. A gap between the injury and the doctor is the first thing anybody disputing your claim will point at.
If you do not have insurance and you are worried about the bill, go anyway. Say you were hurt at work, ask about a community health center, and ask about financial assistance. A hospital bill can be negotiated. A back that never healed cannot.
In the first week
If you were an employee, ask the employer to open a workers compensation claim and ask for the claim number. If they will not, you can file with your state workers comp office yourself.
Keep every receipt and every piece of paper. Prescriptions, mileage to appointments, and the days you could not work.
Keep a short note each day about the pain and what you could not do. It sounds like a lot. It is the difference between a claim that is believed and one that is argued about.
Do not sign what you have not read
If somebody offers cash right there to settle it, be careful. Sometimes it is a decent person doing the right thing quickly. Sometimes it is a release that ends your right to anything else, signed before you know how bad the injury is.
You are allowed to say you want to see a doctor first. Anyone rushing you to sign at the tailgate has told you what the paper is for.
If they were supposed to have coverage and did not
An employer with no workers comp who was required to carry it is in real trouble with the state, and many states have a fund that pays injured workers in exactly that situation.
That is the point where free legal aid is worth calling. Most injury lawyers also look at these for nothing up front. See the guide on where to get help in your state.
Nobody can punish you for reporting it
Firing or blacklisting a worker for reporting an injury or a safety problem is illegal in every state, and there is a complaint process for it.
Report the employer here too. We can remove them from the platform, and the report is what keeps the next person off that site.
This guide is general information, not legal, tax, or insurance advice. Rules differ by state and by situation, so talk to your own professional before you rely on it.
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