Not Hired On After a Warehouse Injury

Attorney Answer

Being let go instead of hired on full time is usually lawful by itself — but if the injury or the claim you made is why it happened, California law does give you something.

Start with the injury. A crush injury from a pallet at work is a workers' compensation matter. Cal. Lab. Code § 3602(a) makes the compensation system the employee's sole and exclusive remedy against the employer when the conditions of compensation are met, which is why the route runs through a claim rather than a lawsuit against the warehouse. Being healed now does not erase the claim: the system pays for the treatment you already had and for time you lost, and it does not ask whether anyone was careless.

Two things sit outside that exclusive remedy, and both may matter here.

First, if something other than your employer caused the pallet to move — a defective piece of equipment, a maintenance contractor, another company working the same floor — that party can be pursued in ordinary negligence under Cal. Civ. Code § 1714(a), which holds everyone responsible for injury caused by want of ordinary care. A third-party claim is separate from the compensation claim and runs on its own deadline.

Second, being pushed out because you were hurt is its own violation. Cal. Lab. Code § 132a states: "It is the declared policy of this state that there should not be discrimination against workers who are injured in the course and scope of their employment." The remedy is real but bounded — compensation increased by one-half up to $10,000, costs up to $250, reinstatement and lost wages — and it is pursued inside the workers' compensation system, not in a regular court.

The honest limit is this. A temporary assignment does not have to become permanent, and no California statute in this area entitles a worker to be converted. What the law reaches is the reason. If the timing simply looked bad, that is not enough; if the injury, the medical visits or the claim were the reason, that is what § 132a is for. Proof usually comes from timing, from what was said, and from how other temps in the same position were treated.

What you can do

1. If you have not filed a workers' compensation claim for the rib injury, ask both the staffing agency and the warehouse for a claim form and file it. Do it promptly — the reporting and filing deadlines in the compensation system are short (Cal. Lab. Code § 5400).

2. Get the records from the industrial medical clinic, including the visit notes and any work restrictions they wrote.

3. Collect what shows the timing: your assignment paperwork, schedules, pay records, and any texts, emails or messages about being hired on and about being told your services were no longer needed.

4. Write down the names and job titles of the supervisors involved and what each of them said to you and when.

5. Ask a local workers' compensation attorney two questions: whether a Labor Code § 132a petition fits your facts, and whether anyone other than your employer may be responsible for the equipment that failed.

Most lawyers offer a brief initial call at no cost, and a few minutes on your specific facts with someone licensed in California is worth more than any general guidance, including this page.

⏱ Time limits apply. A Cal. Lab. Code § 132a claim has its own deadline, and it is shorter than the deadlines people expect; the underlying workers' compensation claim has separate reporting and filing deadlines of its own. If someone other than your employer is responsible for the equipment, Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 335.1 sets two years for a personal injury claim against that party. Which dates apply turns entirely on your facts, so have a local workers' compensation attorney check them now.