If secrtary has go to the post office to pickup the mail as part of her job and falls on icy step at the post office, who’s at liability. Assume the state is Rhode Island
She was at work doing her job. Workman’s Comp should pay.
I wondered how this would go in the UK. The Post Office has a duty of care to its customers (the public) to keep them safe. Failing to treat the icy step would be a breach of this duty and I am pretty sure that it would be them who had to cough up for any compensation. I can’t see how her employer has been in any way negligent.
Of course, the secretary may well be paid while she is off work (as part of her contract of employment) and also might be entitled to state benefits if not. When the compensation chaim is concluded, they would have to refund any money that they had received from other sources.
Secretarys in the UK have employment contracts?
In the US about the only people who have employment contracts are upper executives.
Plus, workers compensation is normally on a no-fault basis, not negligence. Is that not the case in the U.K.?
You always have a “contract”; it’s just not always written down. 
The injured worker would be covered by workers comp insurance since the injury was on the job, and she could file suit against the Post Office (only employers are upimmune from suit). The workers comp carrier would probably have Subrogation rights against any recovery.
Without trying to get into the details of the law of the state of Rhode Island (and the Providence Plantations), and with the usual disclaimer that the following is not true legal advice; see an attorney in Rhode Island for legal advice worth listening to:
It would appear to be an injury that would be covered by workers’ compensation. As the scenario is written, the employee is doing duties of her job. Thus, the injury has arisen out of the scope of the employment (what we usually abbreviate as AOE/COE: arising out of the employment and occurring during the course of employment). There are caveats here: if the secretary is doing this at the beginning or end of the day, and the employer doesn’t know that she’s doing that, or has specifically admonished her not to do that, arguments can be made she’s outside her scope.
The employer’s workers’ compensation carrier will be obligated to provide benefits. These would include medical treatment, temporary disability indemnity (making up for some portion of lost wages, usually capped), permanent disability indemnity if she suffers a permanently impairing injury (impairing here meaning impairing her ability to work in any job, not just the one she has), and potentially job rehabilitation benefits (this last being very much state dependent). Fault is not at issue for provision of the benefits. The employee must notify the employer of the injury, or the employer can find out about it through other means. Once they are aware, they must provide the requisite benefits without delay.
Depending upon state law, the employer (or their insurance carrier if they are not self-insured) can be entitled to recover from a third party the benefits paid out if that third party was negligent in causing the injury. So, here, if the landlord who left the steps icy was negligent, then the employer could seek to recover the benefits paid in one of two ways: if the employee sues the negligent third party, then the employer will file a lien in the case against any recovery the employee receives, and if the employee does not sue, then the right to sue will be subrogated to the employer, who may then file the suit against the third party. In that latter case, the employer will only be able to recover from the third party the benefits paid, or likely to be paid.
Complicating matters will be the fact that the “negligent” third party may well be the federal government, since it’s a post office. Suing the United States in tort has its own complications, outside the scope of this treatment.
Since this is a legal question, let’s move it to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Employment is a type of contract. If you don’t have a contract, you’re not employed.
No, it isn’t. To recover under an employer’s insurance policy effected under the industrial injuries provisions of the UK social security legislation, the employee needs to show that the employer has a legal liability. That can be founded on negligence or other common-law cause of action, or on breach of statutory duty.
Mind you, there are some fairly wide-ranging duties imposed on employers (e.g. to provide a safe system of work) and of course employers are vicariously liable for breaches of duty committed by other employees, so it would be unusual for there to be no liability for an injury arising in the course of employment. But the example given in the OP might be such a case.
Worker’s comp adjuster (in CA), cosigning this.
Another caveat: if picking up employer mail was only an incidental purpose of the trip to the post office, the injury is likely out of the course and scope.
If it’s part of her job it’s covered by Temporary Disability Insurance here in RI, which is not the same as Workman’s Comp. That is available also. I’d be surprised if she wasn’t asked if the injury occurred on the job when she sought treatment. TDI will provide her with tax free income during the time she is unable to work, but it is not covering liability for the accident, her medical costs will be covered by Workman’s Comp, and that will be based on an insurance policy carried by her employer (she hopes they have it anyway). Any additional costs will have to be settled in court, I can’t say who would be liable if gets to that point but suing the USPS doesn’t sound like fun.
ETA: She would only seek TDI if there were problems in getting Workman’s Comp for an on the job incident.
Another caveat (in Canada anyway): There will be some questions regarding the employee’s own actions to prevent such an accident while performing their duties. This would include proper workplace safety precautions such as appropriate footwear for the weather conditions and whether they remained in areas that were cleared and prepared for safe pedestrian traffic.
For a person to be construed as “at work” or “on the job”, he does not necessarily need to be inside the physical premises of the workplace.
Gut-feeling logic would suggest to me that a person is “on the job” if performing a duty under the direction of a supervisor.
Say, she was going out to lunch, off the clock, and her boss said “Here, mail this at the post office for me while you are out”, any accident that occurred while she was away from her lunch break leisure would count as on the job. If she was injured in the cafeteria with the letter in her purse, then no, not on the job. But any path that required a deviation from her leisure activity, performed at the direction of a supervisor, would place her in covered territory.
A court following the reasonable-person doctrine would likely rule accordingly, absent any formal contract to the contrary. Such as a union agreement, in which the union could even file a grievance if she agreed to mail the letter when off the clock, or if mailing the letter was not included in her job description.
This is not the case at all in CA. As we say at the office, “Stupidity is compensable.” If you’re a roofer and you elect not to wear your harness and as a result fall off a building, we’re still on the hook for your injury/death even if the employer provides the safety equipment, tells you to use it, and it’s clear that the injury could have been avoided if you had been wearing it.
WCB in Canada is a no-fault system. I have also personally witnessed people who had workplace accidents receive WCB benefits who were clearly at fault for their accident.
Any investigation that I have seen is an investigation of the employer. There are fines and penalties for providing an unsafe work environment. IME, those investigations only affect the employer’s future premiums, not the employee’s benefits.
WCB, like labour laws, are handled on a province by province basis. I’ve only administered WCB in BC, AB, YT and NWT, so there could be different rules for other provinces, but I’m not finding them with google. Do you have a cite for your claim?
Workers’ compensation is a no-fault system everywhere in the US too, but that does not necessarily mean an employee’s own acts cannot be disqualifying. For example, the instigator of a fight is generally denied benefits if he gets beaten up.
No fault in Manitoba as well (8 years as WCB workers advocate in former workplace.) Her injury would be compensable provided that it was (as was said earlier) an injury received while working within the confines of her job.
If, after working hours, while on the way to the store for milk she stopped at the post office to mail a work package then I would doubt it would be but I’m not certain. Though I’d still have tried 
Based on info given in OP it is compensable.