Experience rating

What is it and how does it work? For a good overview, read:

"Experience? Rating?" ⁄ Injured Workers' History Project bulletin #6 (2008) Origins of Ontario's experience rating system and its adverse consequences for both injured workers and workplace health and safety.

"Squeezing the worker: how experience rating works." / Marion Endicott. IAVGO Reporting Service v. 11, no.1 (September 1996): 6-9.]
"Experience Rating is having a very negative effect on injured workers. It is undermining the basic principles on which the compensation system is built... and increasingly making the system more and more adversarial...."

Media on Experience Rating [click here for recent news coverage]

MPPs' Questions in the Legislative Assembly

Selected key documents:

"Experience rating: prevention of injuries or managing injured workers?" ⁄ Terri Aversa (April 6, 2009). Paper argues that while reducing workplace injuries is an honourable objective, the Board's NEER program is based upon a false assumption that reducing injury rates creates safer workplaces. Rather than relying on a financial incentive that may motivate employers to underreport injuries and aggressively contest legitimate claims, the author calls for Ontario to implement a balanced system that focuses on prevention and properly monitors workplace safety.

Board releases Morneau Sobeco report and discussion paper on experience rating; announces further consultation, Feb. 27, 2009

Ontario Federation of Labour. "The Perils of Experience Rating: Exposed!" (October 5, 2007)
The OFL report shows that, far from being an incentive for safety and injury prevention, the practice encourages employers to mis-report and under-report accidents, to force injured workers back to work before they are medically ready, and to pay workers sick pay rather than have them receive compensation benefits....
IWC response to the "WCB/WSIB Consultation on Accreditation for Ontario Workplaces" (May 30, 2007)
In its submission on the Board's initiative on workplace health and safety, Injured Workers' Consultants notes that, if planned well, accreditation provides some opportunity to re-direct the use of experience rating incentives.