POLITICS / Issues &
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Deeming
Injured workers need permanent
compensation for permanent injury. The wage loss system has been distorted
and is not being calculated as Hon. Gergory Sorbara intended it when he
introduced the legislation in 1989. Low wage earners end up with little or
no compensation and no retraining even if they can actually never return
to employment : a "phantom wage for a phantom job".
Injured workers should at least be compensated for
their actual loss of wages and they should be entitled to at least one
year of job search assistance.
And if there is a disability for
life, there should be a pension for life.
There should be no
reduction in benefits if an injured worker gets Canada Pension Disability
benefits. The injured worker has paid for those benefits. Ontario should
negotiate with the federal governmnet to maintain contributions to the CPP
for those injured workers who can neither work nor receive the Canada
Pension Disability benefit. (source: Toronto Injured Workers
Groups)
The Board, in its September 2005 response
to the Minister, committed to a policy review that would give injured workers
"greater flexibility and fairness"; however the proposed policies under the
new Bill 187 leave injured workers worse off than before...
Read more....
- "IWC submission regarding Bill 187 July 2007 interim policies - Deeming adds insult to injury" (Nov. 2007)
- "Injured Workers History Project bulletin #4: Deeming - it's just wrong!"
[pdf]
- ONIWG submission to the Minister on Bill 187
with suggested amendments on deeming (April 18, 2007)
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Unfunded Liability
For the past decade employer organizations, the
WCB/WSIB and the Ministry of Labour have raised the unfunded liability as
a central theme in all discussions of workers' compensation reform. The
argument goes that there is an unfunded liability, that this is a bad
thing that threatens the viability of the workers' compensation system,
and that the elimination of the unfunded liability must therefore be a
priority for the Board. Improving benefits for injured workers, or simply
restoring the cost of living adjustments that once applied to injured
workers' benefits, cannot be on the table until later, once the unfunded
liability is eliminated.
If you accept this line of reasoning,
injured workers will never see the restoration of cost of living
adjustments, compensation will never be improved, and their suffering will
only increase. There is another way to understand where future costs fit
into the balance sheet. This other way allows for needed reform.
Read
more...
- "The
injured worker community view of unfunded liability" (IWC / Bright
Lights Injured Workers, Aug. 2005)
[pdf]
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Universal Coverage
Although little
has been done to develop workers’ compensation coverage since its
inception in 1915, Justice Meredith’s foundational report states that his
list was intended to be just a beginning step towards comprehensive
coverage of Ontario workplaces.
The extension of workers compensation coverage to
include all workers in all workplaces in Ontario remains an important
concern among injured workers.
- Ontario Legisative
Assembly :
Question to the Minister of Labour on the Brock
Smith report and extending coverage of workers' compensation. Andrea Horwath
/ Steve Peters. (December 7, 2006)
- Ministry
of Labour news release on extending mandatory coverage in the
construction industry (March 28, 2006)
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Experience Rating
What is it and how does it work? For a good overview, read:
Media on Experience Rating [click here for recent news coverage]
Questions in the Legislative Assembly
WCB announces experience rating review [News release, Mar. 10, 2008]
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Return to Work - Early
& Safe?
Bill 99 is premised on the fiction
that the "workplace parties", injured worker and employer, are equal and
best positioned to ensure that injured workers have an early and safe
return to work. Self reliance is touted as the means to achieve this, so
the Board need not become involved. With a little training or
encouragement, injured workers are on a level playing field with all the
other job seekers.
The result we are seeing is that the Board has a
license to cut benefits when the employer calls and claims that suitable
work is available at no wage loss. The Board counts another success story
and takes no responsibility for seeing whether the job is really suitable,
whether it has really been offered to the worker, or whether it can be
sustained. The injured worker is blamed for the lack of success.
Workers
compensation becomes an arbitrary system of short term benefits - when you
are supposed to be healed, you are cut off. We are finding that more
injured workers are being cut off benefits without suitable work available
or are being forced to go back to work before they are healed or are being
forced to do work that conflicts with their medical
restrictions.
In 2005 the Workers' Compensation Board proposed draft policies
to address longstanding problems with ESRTW; based on response, a second set of
draft policies
was issued in October 2006 [summary of the second consultation, Aug. 2007]
Read responses and
recommendations...
- "Injured Workers' Consultants Community Legal Clinic submissions to the WSIB/WCB
Consultation on Early and Safe Return to Work Policies 2007" [February 2007]
[pdf]
- "Submission of Injured Workers' Consultants Community Legal Clinic to the WSIB/WCB
Consultation on Early and Safe Return to Work Policies" [January 2006]
[pdf]
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Permanent
Disability Compensation
Permanent disability
compensation is an issue because the compensation is disappearing even
though the permanent disabilities are not. One of the founding principles
of workers’ compensation established by Meredith was compensation for as
long as the disability lasts. Lifelong pensions for lifelong disabilities
was a cornerstone. This era ended in 1989 when Bill 162 came into force.
Wage loss payments never fully recognized the impact of permanent
disabilities. The obligation to re-employ injured workers in their old job
was no help to those who were not able to perform their old job. Bill 99
further reduces permanent disability compensation because a job does not
even have to be available for the Board to deem an injured worker to have
the earnings from it. The system pretends that with a little training, the
permanently disabled are on a level playing field with the able bodied
competing for the same jobs. But systemic discrimination is still a
reality for the vast majority of injured workers with permanent
disabilities. About 80% are currently unemployed in spite of the Boards
efforts. They are the last hired, the first fired and the worst paid. As
long as this remains true, the compensation system must recognize this in
benefits and services.
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