Carer who slipped on wet laundry awarded £213,000

A care worker who was injured after slipping on wet laundry and had to give up work as a result has been awarded more than £200,000 compensation after UNISON took up her case. The payout comes after bosses at Newcastle City Council initially offered her just £9,500 in damages.

Residential home carer Karen Martin, aged 37 when the incident occurred in 1997, was carrying dirty clothes to a washing machine when she slipped at Riverside View Residential Home in Byker, Newcastle upon Tyne. Her former employer argued that Mrs Martin had a pre-existing back complaint that would have stopped her working within a year of the accident in any case. UNISON’s head of health and safety Hugh Robertson said: ' This is a tragic case, and one that could have been easily avoided if the employer had simply followed the manual handling regulations. However while compensation can never recompense the lives destroyed by back injury, it does show that workers need trade union advice and support to get their due entitlement from their employer.'
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