Feature Article January 8,2003
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WSIB failureThere is a problem in Ontario - many silent voices of people who are unable to work as a result of a workplace injury. They suffer in financial hardship and desperation. An injured worker must survive on approx. $15,000 or less, per year loss of employment income (LOE) payment from Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB).
The WSIB strategy is that reducing and/or terminating benefits and putting more emphasis on prevention and return to work (of injured workers) is the most effective way to control WSIB expenditures. In reality, depriving injured and disabled workers of their right to disability benefits does not lead to sustainable employment or functional and medical recovery. It leads to poverty.
In Canada, all injured workers who, as a result of workplace injuries or illnesses become unable to work, must accept very substantial losses of their incomes. That is in addition to the irreversible, often devastating damages to their health and lives, and emotional and physical suffering.
All injured workers deserve the right to lead lives of dignity and quality...to experience the same fullness of opportunity and participation as other members of society. For example: They gave me a couple of jobs to do - light work, like sweeping the floors ... emptying out the garbage ... sterilizing [the] area ... if you didn't do this, you're not cooperating* [with the modified duties approved by WSIB]. Menial work is used in Russia to punish convicted criminals and offenders (The Ottawa Citizen, March 20, 2002)
Claim adjudicators are empowered to deem disabled workers (WSIB "clients") as "non-cooperating" and to penalize them by denying those workers their right to receive their disability income. As a direct result of the workplace compensation adjudicators' excessive "deeming" authority, injured, disabled and ill citizens are frequently left without any source of income to support themselves and their families and they are forced to apply for EI and/or welfare.
This is how the cost of workplace disabilities and related healthcare or training can be transferred from the privately funded (by the insurance premiums payable by employers) compensation boards to publicly funded EI and welfare.
Some injured workers qualify for EI benefits even though they are medically and functionally unable to work. Once the board makes its judgment, the disabled citizen's loss of income benefits are immediately reduced or discontinued, regardless of that citizen's prospects of ever finding a sustainable and meaningful employment. Many injured citizens who are deemed as employable by the WSIB do not find sustainable work.
From a business perspective, employers do not want to hire functionally limited and chronically ill workers. The private sector employers are not social or health care agencies. They are business entities - they invest (including their investments in human resources) to maximize profits. It is time that our country's politicians and lawmakers recognize this very basic socio-economic factor.
The citizens who become unemployable as a result of their workplace accidents and occupational diseases need to be sufficiently compensated for their losses and limitations so they could participate in our society instead of being forced to poverty and becoming a burden to their families and society.
Insured employers and injured workers can appeal the decisions of adjudicators -- the decisions remain in effect until the WSIB Appeals Branch and (if the litigation proceeds to the final stage) the Workplace Safety and Insurance Appeals Tribunal (WSIAT) confirm, amend or revoke the initial decisions. The actions or decisions of the WSIAT are final and are not open for question or review in a court.
To sum this up, rights are being violated! Can discrimination be so obvious? Yet nothing is done! Sad, but true!
Scott Young, Kaladar
