WSIB gives corporations millions while doctors, injured workers outraged

TORONTO, ON--(Marketwired - October 31, 2016) - Despite growing public attention surrounding the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board's (WSIB) treatment of workers who get injured on the job, the WSIB announced Friday that they will further reduce employers' premium rates that fund the system.
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http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/oniwg-wsib-gives-corporations-millions-while-doctors-injured-workers-outraged-2170921.htm

Mike Spencer and struggles on WSIB

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

Fred Palmer November 1, 2013 at 1:36 pm #

 

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/

Ontario’s workplace safety board tries to muzzle online commenter

Windsor’s self-described defender of injured workers fights peace bond

Mike Spencer walks out of Ontario Court of Justice, Tuesday, March 17, 2015. A WSIB security manager is seeking a peace bond against Spencer to stop him from posting allegedly derogatory and threatening comments online. (DAX MELMER/The Windsor Star)

 

Trevor Wilhelm Mar 18, 2015 - 7:23 PM EDT Last Updated: Mar 18, 2015 - 8:01 PM EDT 

 

A man who sees himself as a champion of injured workers grew agitated and emotional on the witness stand Wednesday as he tried to stop an arm of the Ontario government from muzzling his online comments.

The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board is trying to get a peace bond against Mike Spencer to stop him from posting what it considers threatening comments against employees on Facebook.

But Spencer testified he never intended to threaten harm against anyone. He said he was trying to be a voice for injured people who have been “harassed,” “abused,” financially ruined and even driven to suicide by WSIB employees and practices.

“They can see me there defending them,” said Spencer, 54, originally from Pennsylvania. “It gives them hope. Maybe they won’t go and kill themselves next week.”

The WSIB has been monitoring Spencer’s online activity since 2011.

They take issue with numerous online comments, including “you are going to hell with all your murdering ilk. If I can do anything to expedite that I will.” Another post stated “the time for talking is over. I’ve had enough. I think you all need a lesson and I can’t think of anyone more qualified to give it to you than me.”
Another claimed “the consequences of your actions are long overdue but they are coming scum. They are coming.”

WSIB repeatedly tried to get him to stop posting comments. When sending letters didn’t work, they called Windsor police. Officers met with Spencer and gave him a warning, but the comments didn’t stop.

Sgt. Gary Williams testified he felt there was enough evidence to charge Spencer, but the Crown attorney said a peace bond would be a better way to go.
“There is a level of freedom of speech,” said Williams. “But you can cross that line.”

Spencer, who worked in mechanical and steel fabrication, was hurt Sept. 11, 2008. Under questioning from his lawyer, he didn’t go into the details of the accident, but said his leg was snapped in three places.

After fighting for benefits and having WSIB cut off paying for painkillers, Spencer said he has a $610 monthly pension. He said the constant fighting with WSIB caused him to sink into depression.

“They made me feel like killing myself,” said Spencer. “They made me wish I was dead.”

A friend directed him to some Facebook pages where people in similar circumstances commiserate online. Spencer said that was where he realized how widespread the problem, as he sees it, has become. He claims the stress from dealing with WSIB and receiving inadequate benefits, combined with the pain of injuries, cause people to have heart attacks and strokes. He said some have even killed themselves. Spencer, calling it the “silent genocide,” said he hears from a few people a week contemplating suicide.

He claims his comments are not meant to be threatening or incite violence. Spencer said much of what he posted was meant to get him sued or otherwise hauled into court so he had another public forum to express his views.
“This is all to humiliate and demean them so disabled workers can see and they won’t be afraid,” said Spencer.

He said he doesn’t want to hurt WSIB employees. He wants them in jail.
“I want these people criminally charged, I want them tried, I want them convicted and I want them punished,” said Spencer.
twilhelm@windsorstar.com

MORE:


A two-day hearing began Tuesday with Frank Brunato, WSIB’s corporate safety manager, seeking a peace bond against Windsor’s Mike Spencer to stop him from posting allegedly derogatory and threatening comments.

http://blogs.windsorstar.com/news/ontarios-wsib-tries-to-muzzle-online-commenter

Cruel cuts at WSIB; Platform for Change would refocus system

Thursday, February 19, 2015 - 08:00

in GUEST COLUMN

By Steve Mantis Thunder Bay

The Ontario Workers’ Compensation System is 100 years old this year. It is the original public program in our social safety net.

While we celebrate that the system has provided income support to millions of disabled workers over many years, it is now showing signs of strain.

Like all the other industrialized nations, Canada has been subjected to the pressures of globalization. This has resulted in significant reductions in spending on programs supporting people with disabilities, regardless of how that disability happened.

Workers’ Compensation has turned into “Workplace Insurance” and adjudicators there are now instructed to “look to deny.”

Workers who receive this treatment are ending up discouraged, depressed and feeling helpless. Often they are also unemployed, struggling to makes ends meet and even ending up homeless.

The latest administration at the Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) has targeted the people most in need of help — those with a permanent, life-long disability.

They have cut the system’s current annual costs by $700 million but the long-term cost savings to the WSIB are in the billions.

The Thunder Bay and District Injured Workers Support Group, begun in 1984, has been studying the workers’ compensation system and helping fellow injured and disabled workers.

Our members come from all sectors of society — workers, employers, owner/operators, union activists and civil servants.

The support group believes the system can be improved to the benefit of all our community.

We are releasing our Platform for Change for the Workers Compensation System on Feb. 19.

We believe that the WSIB may be balancing its books in the short term, but causing major hardships to many members in our community.

This short-term vision will leave us all with significant social deficits that lower our quality of life.

By refocusing the system to help workers who have become disabled in the course of their employment, we will see better employment outcomes and workers who have regained their capacity to re-engage in society.

Like the Scandinavian countries that have the best benefits for people with disabilities, they also have the highest levels of employment for disabled workers.

Injured workers need a rehabilitation system that recognizes the special difficulties they face as persons with disabilities in obtaining and maintaining employment.

In Ontario, this rehabilitation system will seek to assist injured workers with both social integration and the attaining of suitable employment.

It will be a system that fully compensates and supports those workers who have suffered a workplace injury or illness, assists such workers in returning to employment with dignity, and aids in protecting all workers from injury or illness at work.

To that end the Platform for Change outlines how this result can be achieved.
Now is the time the Ontario government needs to come to the table and have serious discussions with injured and disabled workers about improving our oldest social program with the intention of having a system that makes us all proud.

Steve Mantis co-founded the Thunder Bay and District Injured Workers Support Group, the Ontario Network of Injured Workers Groups and the Canadian Injured Workers Alliance.



Source: http://www.chroniclejournal.com/content/news/local/2015/02/19/cruel-cuts-wsib-platform-change-would-refocus-system