immediate family members, farmers or their family members exchanging work within the community and their employees are also exempted from coverage. Executive officers of a family farm corporation are excluded. • Casual Employees: An employee who is not working in the usual course of the trade, business, profession or occupation of the employer and both the employee and the employer understand that the employment is meant to be for one time or infrequent rather than permanent or periodically regular. • Household Workers: This includes a domesti c worker, a repairer, groundskeeper or maintenance worker at a private household who earns less than $1,000 cash during a quarter of the year unless more than $1,000 was earned in any quarter of the previous year. The Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry has information sheets which expand the definitions and criteria above. They can be accessed at the address, phone number or website listed in the Resource Directory section of this Guide. The Minnesota Workers’ Compensation Act provides that insurance coverage may be purchased for many of the above named classes of persons. When coverage is provided, the insured person becomes an “employee” as defined within the statute. When coverage is elected or terminated, written notice must be provided to the insurer and becomes effective the day following receipt of the notice or at a later date requested in the notice. An employer contracting with an independent contractor may also provide insurance for that person. The employer may only charge the independent contractor a fee for the coverage if the independent contractor elects in writing to be covered and is issued an endorsement setting forth the terms of the coverage, the names of the persons covered, the fee charged and how the fee is calculated. Employers who do not obtain the required insurance face serious consequences including penalties of up to $1,000 per employee per week and an order prohibiting the employer from employing any person. In addition, the employer of any nonresidential construction, repair, or remodeling project that fails to provide workers’ compensation coverage for employees may be sued for damages by any losing bidder on the project. The losing bidder may be entitled to recover the amount of profit the winning contractor expected to make on the project, as well as costs and attorney fees. WORKER IDENTIFICATION NUMBER The Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry Workers’ Compensation Division generates a worker identification number – or WID number into its system that may be used instead of a Social Security Number (SSN) to identify claims. The WID number is person-specific: a unique two- to eight-character number is automatically generated within the Workers’ Compensation Division computer system when a claim-generating document is received (such as a claim petition where a First Report of Injury form has not been filed). It may be used rather than the SSN, with the date of the injury, to identify a specific case file.
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