Injured Retail Employees Are Being Screwed at Every Turn

June 17, 2026

Worker protections have been rolled back at the federal level—and good luck trying to secure workers’ comp.

A third-party administrator may decide you don’t really need a doctor.

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“He might not be able to work here any longer.”

These were the words that made me want to report on injury in the retail industry. I was working as a cashier in a supermarket when a manager commented casually that a 57-year-old colleague might have to quit. For six years, the cashier had been picking up grocery items and moving them across the scanner. The motion had led to a sharp pain in his elbow that forced him to stop working multiple times during a shift. The manager seemed resigned to the fact that with no health insurance and unable to afford long-term leave, the cashier might have to quit the job that he could no longer perform.

I remembered my former colleague’s situation when I interviewed Parker, an employee in a Utah outlet of a national supermarket chain. (At Parker’s request, to protect his job, The Nation is not using his full name or naming his employer.) One day last summer, the 25-year-old picked up a case of cauliflower. “I felt something slip in my back,” he told me. “I tried to stand but couldn’t. There was so much pain.” Employed in the service industry since high school, when he bagged groceries at a different chain, he was used to the physical toll of retail work. But this was no ordinary back ache. In too much pain to finish his shift, he went home early that day.

Parker knew from experience that it could take weeks to get an appointment with his primary care doctor. And since he worked in a non-union store in a right-to-work state, he had no union to turn to for support, leaving him to advocate for himself. “I told my boss that I wanted to apply for workers’ comp because the pain was not stopping,” he said. His manager told him that he would first have to call a “nurses’ line” about his injury.

The person who answered his call did not work for Parker’s employer or an insurance company. She was a representative from a third-party administrator, or TPA. Intermediaries between workers and employers, TPA firms play a large role in our healthcare system: About 60 percent of workers are covered by plans that partner with them. In Parker’s case, he was dealing with Gallagher Bassett, a subsidiary of Arthur J. Gallagher and Co., a global insurance brokerage and risk-management firm that handles liability claims for companies from retailers to healthcare providers to educational institutions.

The Gallagher Bassett representative told Parker that she did not think he needed to see a doctor. When he insisted on being checked out by a physician, she said that the clinic the firm preferred to send workers to was closed on the weekend. Could he wait until Monday? When Parker refused to delay his care, Gallagher Bassett issued a temporary insurance card that allowed him to seek treatment at an urgent care facility.

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Gallagher Bassett declined to be interviewed for this article. In an e-mail, a spokesperson for the company explained that she could not answer questions unless I provided the name of the employee and the name of his employer.

The day Parker injured his back, he became one of the 2 million employees per year who get hurt or become ill on the job. He was never formally diagnosed with a musculoskeletal disorder. But MSDs caused by excessive lifting, bending, and repetitive motion are among the most common workplace injuries. Accounting for about three-quarters of injuries in the retail industry, they can lead to chronic pain and long-term debilitation.

Parker’s experience trying to apply for paid leave coincided with a rollback in worker protections at the federal level. This year, Senator Elizabeth Warren and five colleagues announced an investigation into the Trump Labor Department, reporting a sharp drop in inspections by the Occupational Safey and Health Administration (OSHA) and 42 percent fewer fines in 2025 than in the prior year. They accused the administration of using the language of “workers first” to pursue a deregulatory agenda and pressed the Labor Department for information about the declines.

I spoke to Debbie Berkowitz, a worker safety and policy expert and former senior OSHA adviser about the current state of workplace safety regulation. She told me that OSHA has never been fully funded and is under constant attack by business interests because “companies don’t want to be regulated.” The agency has had “no power to do things quickly” and has “fewer inspectors now than under Ronald Reagan.” It is also hampered by a lengthy rulemaking process that means it could take 10 years to write a regulation.

Berkowitz stated that OSHA has long known about the dangers of MSDs in industries such as retail and meatpacking. “It was clear that repetitive motion causes disorders,” she said. During the Clinton administration, officials tried to “address the…