If you work for the City of New York, your workers’ compensation claim is not handled by an insurance company. It is handled by the City itself.
The City is self-insured. It pays its own claims, and the Workers’ Compensation Division of the Law Department administers them — roughly 17,500 new claims a year, argued at more than 15,000 hearings. The lawyer on the other side of your case works for the same employer you do.
That does not change your rights. It does change how the claim feels, and it explains most of what City workers find confusing about the process.
Who the City’s program covers, and who it does not
The Law Department’s division handles claims for employees across more than 80 City agencies. It also covers three groups people often assume are on their own:
- Non-pedagogical staff of the Department of Education — paraprofessionals, school nurses, occupational and physical therapists, school safety and custodial staff.
- Employees of NYC Health + Hospitals.
- Employees of the City University of New York.
Three groups are outside it: uniformed police officers, firefighters and uniformed sanitation workers. Those titles have their own line-of-duty injury and disability systems rather than an ordinary comp claim. Being outside the comp system does not mean being without a case, though — a uniformed member hurt by an outside party has a third-party claim, and in some respects a stronger position than a civilian with a comp file. If that is you, the answer to your question is a different one than this page gives — call and we will tell you straight whether it is something we handle.
Teachers sit on a line worth understanding. A paraprofessional or a school nurse files a workers’ compensation claim. Pedagogical staff generally go through the line-of-duty injury process instead. Same building, same incident, two different routes.
If you work for an authority, the City is not your employer
NYC Transit, the MTA and the New York City Housing Authority are public authorities. They are separate employers from the City, and a claim by one of their employees is not administered by the City’s Law Department. Health + Hospitals and CUNY, despite sounding equally independent, are inside the City’s program.
This sounds like trivia until a form goes to the wrong place. If you are not sure which side of the line you are on, look at the name of the employer on your pay stub and on any correspondence you have received about the injury. That name, not the building you work in, is your employer for this purpose.
What does not change either way: the Workers’ Compensation Law is the same law, the Board is the same Board, and the benefits are the same benefits. Only the entity defending the claim is different.
Telling your supervisor is not filing a claim
This is the single most expensive mistake City employees make, and it is an understandable one.
You get hurt. You tell your supervisor. Someone from the agency takes a report, you sign something, and a file gets opened. It feels handled. Months later you learn that nothing was ever filed with the Workers’ Compensation Board.
An agency incident report is your employer’s paperwork. The form that opens your claim is the C-3, and you file it. New York also requires written notice to your employer within 30 days of the accident, and a claim is generally filed with the Board within two years. Those are separate requirements, and an internal report satisfies neither one reliably.
Our guide on what to do after a work injury walks through the first steps.
You do not have to come to the office, or lose a shift, to get started
City work runs on shifts: nights at a shelter, early starts at a garage, rotating tours in a hospital. Coming downtown to sign papers is one more thing an injured worker does not have time for.
You do not need to. A large share of our clients sign up without ever setting foot in the office, and you do not need to sign anything to get started. With your authorization, we sign and file the initial paperwork on your behalf, including the C-3 claim form and the OC-400 notice of retainer that tells the Board and the City we represent you. That also takes care of the mistake described above: the claim actually gets filed, not just reported.
Why your paycheck may look completely normal
Many City workers never see a workers’ compensation check. The City continues their salary instead, and when the Board later makes an award, the City is reimbursed out of it. That is a specific mechanism in the statute: an employer who has paid an employee in the manner of wages during a period of disability can be reimbursed from the unpaid installments of compensation.
The practical consequence catches people out. Because the money never looked different, they conclude they are not “on comp” and that there is no claim to protect. There is. The claim is what keeps your medical treatment authorized, what establishes which body parts are part of this injury, and what makes a permanency award possible later.
Where wage benefits are actually paid, the formula is the same as anywhere else in New York: two-thirds of your average weekly wage, multiplied by your degree of disability. Nothing is paid for the first seven days unless the disability runs past fourteen. On an accepted claim, payments are supposed to start within 18 days of the injury, or within 10 days after your employer knew about it, whichever is later.
Expect it to be slow, and do not treat slow as normal
We will be honest about this rather than pretend otherwise. City claims tend to move slower than claims against private carriers. Payments start late. Medical authorizations sit. Correspondence goes unanswered longer than it should.
Some of that is the sheer volume one office is carrying. None of it is a rule you have to accept. The statutory deadlines apply to a self-insured municipal employer exactly as they apply to an insurance company, and the Board has mechanisms — penalties, directed payment, hearings on request — for a payer that is not meeting them. Those mechanisms do not operate on their own. Somebody has to ask.
Your hearings happen by video, and you will need to be on camera
When somebody does ask, it usually happens at a hearing, and hearings are not what most people picture. Nearly all New York workers’ compensation hearings are now held virtually. Your hearing notice will name a Board location, but you will almost certainly join from home, on a phone or computer, or from our office.
Two current rules are worth knowing:
- You must be on video when you testify. Since February 2, 2026, claimants and witnesses who testify at a virtual hearing must appear on video with their face fully visible. Plan to be somewhere private with a camera and a decent connection, not in a break room or a parked truck between assignments.
- The judge’s call may not look like the judge. Since September 18, 2026, the Board calls from rotating numbers, and your caller ID may show “Cisco WebEx” or an out-of-state number. If you have a hearing that day, answer the phone.
At this office, the same attorney will appear at your hearings, and that attorney and Frank Dito work the file together, so when you call afterward the person you reach already knows what happened and what has to happen next.
Your job while you are out: Civil Service Law § 71
This is the protection City workers are least likely to know they have, and the one with the tightest clock.
Under Civil Service Law § 71, an employee who cannot work because of an occupational injury is entitled to a leave of absence of at least one cumulative year, unless the disability is permanent. If the injury came from an assault sustained in the course of employment, the leave is at least two years.
Separation after that leave is not necessarily the end. Within one year after the disability ends, you may apply for a medical examination, and if you are certified fit to perform the duties, you are entitled to reinstatement — to your former position if it is vacant, or to a comparable one. If there is no vacancy, your name goes on a preferred list for that title for four years.
Two things follow from that. The comp claim and the job are separate fights, and winning one does not automatically win the other. And the one-year window after the disability ends is easy to sleep through, because nothing arrives in the mail to tell you it has started running.
A disability pension is a different application
City employees sometimes assume that a workers’ compensation finding decides a disability retirement, or the other way around. It does not work that way in either direction.
Accident disability and ordinary disability retirement run through your retirement system, on their own application, their own medical standard and their own deadlines, and the two awards can interact once both exist. Your pension section and your union are the right first call on that, and we will say so rather than guess at it. What we handle is the workers’ compensation claim — which is often the record the other application ends up relying on, so it is worth getting right either way.
If you did World Trade Center rescue, recovery or clean-up work
A large number of City employees worked at Ground Zero, at the Staten Island landfill, or on barges and transfer sites, in the year after September 11. New York lets those workers register that service with the Workers’ Compensation Board on form WTC-12, which preserves the right to bring a claim later for a condition connected to that work.
Two points matter. Registration covers participation between September 11, 2001 and September 12, 2002, and it is worth filing even if nothing has been diagnosed — the point of it is to keep the door open. And the deadline moved this month: legislation signed ahead of the 25th anniversary extended the filing date to September 11, 2030.
If you have been meaning to register and assumed you had missed it, you have not.
Frequently asked questions
Can a City employee file a workers’ compensation claim?
Yes. Most City employees are covered, including staff across more than 80 agencies, non-pedagogical Department of Education employees, and employees of NYC Health + Hospitals and CUNY. Uniformed police officers, firefighters and uniformed sanitation workers are outside the City’s workers’ compensation program and have separate line-of-duty systems.
I filled out an agency injury report. Is my claim filed?
Probably not. An internal incident report is your agency’s paperwork. Your claim is opened by a C-3 filed with the Workers’ Compensation Board, and the two-year filing period runs whether or not an agency report exists.
My salary never stopped. Do I still need a claim?
Yes. The City can continue your salary and be reimbursed out of the eventual award. The claim is separate from the paycheck: it is what authorizes your treatment, establishes the injured body parts, and makes a permanency award possible later.
Can I be fired for being out on a work injury?
Civil Service Law § 71 gives an employee disabled by an occupational injury a leave of absence of at least one year, or at least two years where the injury came from an assault at work. After that, separation is possible, but you may seek reinstatement within one year of the disability ending and can be placed on a preferred list for four years.
I work for NYC Transit or NYCHA. Is that the same as working for the City?
Not for this purpose. Those are separate public authorities, so your claim is not administered by the City’s Law Department. Your rights under the Workers’ Compensation Law are the same; the entity on the other side of the claim is different.
Does a workers’ comp award get me a disability pension?
No. Disability retirement is a separate application through your retirement system, with its own medical standard and deadlines. The two can interact once both exist, but neither decides the other. Your pension section and your union are the right first call on the pension side.
Is it too late to register my World Trade Center service?
No. The deadline to file form WTC-12 with the Workers’ Compensation Board was extended to September 11, 2030. Registration covers participation between September 11, 2001 and September 12, 2002, and is worth filing even if you have no diagnosis.
Do I have to come to your office to sign up?
No. Many of our clients sign up remotely and never visit the office. With your authorization we sign and file the initial forms on your behalf, including the C-3 claim form and the OC-400 notice of retainer.
Do I have to go to a Board office for my hearing?
Almost never. Nearly all workers’ compensation hearings are held virtually, and you can join from home or from our office. Since February 2, 2026, claimants who testify must appear on video with their face visible, so plan to be somewhere private with a camera.
Talk to a New York workers’ compensation attorney
A lot of our neighbors on Staten Island, in Brooklyn and across the five boroughs work for the City. The thing worth knowing about these claims is that they reward someone paying attention to them — the deadline nobody flagged, the treatment authorization sitting unanswered, the permanency exam that never got scheduled.
The Law Offices of Frank J. Dito, Jr. represents injured workers in New York workers’ compensation claims. Call 718.701.2776 (toll-free: 800.310.5520) or contact us for a free consultation. Consultations are free. If we don’t recover money for you, we don’t get paid.
Related: New York workers’ compensation, schedule loss of use awards, nurses and healthcare workers, and injured at work outside Staten Island.
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