Ever been injured at work? Think if you are you’ll be looked after
and made whole? Many injured workers in Ontario are living another
reality after being injured and then entering the Workplace Safety and
Insurance Board – WSIB – system.
According to a website for Ontario injured workers, the “compensation
system is meant to protect workers, their families, and the broader
public against both the harm and the costs of work-related injuries.
This system was created to provide injured workers with prompt and
secure benefits that compensate them for as long as they are disabled.
Workers’ compensation is supposed to be no-fault, prompt, and
non-adversarial. Perhaps most importantly, the workers’
compensation
system was designed to ensure that employers collectively pay the costs
of workplace injuries, instead of foisting those costs on injured
workers, their families, and the rest of us.
If unchecked, recent initiatives by the Workplace Safety and
Insurance Board, will spell the end of workers’ compensation as we have
known it. The Board’s management, with the full support of the
provincial government, have instituted changes that will limit workers’
entitlement to benefits to a short period after the injury. Instead of a
system that compensates workers for injuries, we will be left with
system where most workers’ claims are denied and the few workers whose
claims are accepted will be forced either back to work or into poverty.”
With me was local activist Mike Spence, himself an injured worker,
and we had a discussion on the reality of life for injured workers in
the WSIB system:
Comments
On August 30, 1979, I was thrown from, dragged, and crushed, by
three rail cars. Company negligence caused the derailment that hurt 6
men. I am still standing. Barely. Since then I have been subjected to
the most horrendous neglect and tortured by it. I was shattered from
head to toe. Suffering a brain injury and moderate to severe Chronic
Pain ever since. Pain so severe I nearly died of a stroke. Crippled so
bad I cannot walk or stand for very long. Partially paralyzed on the
right side of my back, frozen shoulder, twisted spine, herniated disks,
crushed ankle, and if I walk or stand too long will develop blood clots.
I was not told this and nearly died of blood clots. I was put back to
work totally disabled from employment then slandered when I quit to see
my doctor. For 34 years now I have lived in the utmost fear, depression,
anxiety, and anger, at having my whole life stolen from me. I have
nothing, exist with the charity of food banks and friends. A little over
a year ago WSIB cut off my pension. I think because they say I am dead.
Every crime has been committed against me, every insurance fraud,
including fraud on the Supreme Court of Canada for disobeying a court
order to treat patients in pain. The WSIB is killing its patients
because of this neglect. I am one of its many victims. We only have
government to blame for this mess they have created. The WSIB operates
with a “get out of jail free” card. Two actually. If any Canadian
accepts workers compensation insurance in this country, they are
automatically classed as an “injured worker” and excluded from the
Canada Health Act. You are then left at the mercy of a criminal
insurance company who will cut off the most serious claims and leave the
person in pain and poverty and stress. To make matters worse (can it
get worse than having a criminal insurance company control your medical
care and financial benefits?) you also lose your legal rights. Oh yes
you heard that right. You have no legal rights. Each Workers
Compensation Act in each Province removes an injured workers legal
rights. Maybe it is time healthy Canadians ask why is this removal of
rights taking place? I never gave up my rights. Did you? It appears to
me the WSIB, and other Workers Compensation Boards, are using these Acts
to commit every crime imaginable, including cutting off the most
seriously injured and disabled citizens. Crimes for money. Leaving the
injured workers and their families in absolute misery having to beg off
family and friends to survive. And pain so severe they can’t even sleep.
A life, a family, ruined by deceit, fraud, slander, theft, neglect, and
discrimination. We need a National dialogue on the issue of workers
compensation in this country. Too many are suffering needlessly by being
denied medical care. Too many losing all they worked hard for. Too many
committing suicide or dying from the stresses of being denied medical
care and being forced into poverty. Wake up Canada. For our children’s
sake, our families, friends and neighbours. For all of us.
Source: http://windsorshakeup.com/2013/11/01/oct-25-2013-mike-spencer-and-struggles-on-wsib/
