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The short answer
Generally covered — including during orientation, and including before your first paid shift.
Training is a service growing out of and incidental to employment, which is exactly what § 3600(a)(2) requires.
Why it is covered
Labor Code § 3357 presumes that any person rendering service for another is an employee. Section 3351 defines employee broadly and does not require that you have completed anything.
And § 3600(a)(2) asks whether you were performing service growing out of and incidental to the employment. Training is that, because the employer required it and the employer benefits from it.
"I hadn't officially started yet" is not a defense, and neither is "it was your first day." It was my first day.
The variations
Unpaid orientation. Whether time is compensable under wage law and whether an injury is covered are different questions. A required, employer-controlled orientation is generally within the employment even where a pay dispute exists alongside it.
Off-site training. Covered where the employer required or paid for it. Travel to and from required off-site training can also be covered under the special-errand exception to the going-and-coming rule. Commuting.
Physical agility or fitness testing as a hiring or promotional requirement. This one is fact-specific, and it turns partly on whether participation was required and whether the employer directed it.
Voluntary recreational activity is the exception that goes the other way. § 3600(a)(9) excludes injury from voluntary participation in an off-duty recreational, social, or athletic activity that is not a reasonable expectancy of the employment. The word doing the work there is "voluntary" — an activity everyone understood you were expected to attend is not.
Apprenticeship and school-based training have their own considerations, including who the employer is for coverage purposes.
What to do
Report it immediately, in writing, exactly as you would any other injury. The 30-day notice rule under § 5400 applies, and § 5403 means late notice bars a claim only where the employer was actually prejudiced.
Name who was running the training and who was present. Trainees scatter afterward and become very hard to find.
Keep whatever paperwork you were given — the schedule, the sign-in sheet, the materials. A sign-in sheet is proof you were there, doing what they told you to do.
And file the DWC-1 even if you are no longer working there. Whether you completed training, were hired, or were let go afterward does not undo the injury.
Sources
Labor Code § 3357 (presumption of employment) · § 3351 (definition of employee) · § 3600(a)(2)–(3) (course and scope) · § 3600(a)(9) (voluntary off-duty recreational activity) · § 5400, § 5402(a), § 5403 (notice and the prejudice requirement) · § 3202 (liberal construction).
General information about California law, not legal advice about your case.
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