Hold Government to Account for Attacks on Injured
Workers! Scrap the Anti-Worker Benefits Policies!
- Christine Nugent -
May 8, 2014 -
The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB)
concluded
consultations on its anti-worker Draft Benefits Policies on April 30.
New and revised benefits policies were to be finalized by the WSIB and
presented to the board of directors headed by Chair Elizabeth Witmer
(who also led the Harris-era attack
on injured workers). The WSIB timeline called for the policies to then
be submitted to the Minister of Labour in June. This will now be
delayed by the decision of the Wynne government to hold a general
election on June 12. Injured workers, their organizations and their
allies are using the election to make all politicians
and candidates aware of and accountable for the damage the cuts are
causing to the lives of injured workers and their families and to
mobilize workers' opposition to the WSIB cuts.
Injured workers and their allies are holding the Ontario
government
directly responsible for the severe benefit cuts already being
implemented by the WSIB under the signboard of a policy review. The
WSIB is preparing new benefits policies designed by the accounting
mercenaries at KPMG that will result in
$13 billion in cuts to benefits received by workers injured on the job
and by families whose loved ones are killed on the job.
Injured workers' groups point out that the WSIB has
already been
applying the proposed new benefits policies illegally for the past four
years, resulting in great harm to injured workers. One of the most
outrageous practices the WSIB has been illegally carrying out and wants
to formalize concerns denying benefits
for what the WSIB calls "pre-existing conditions." This means denying
benefits to workers if they are older or were suffering from certain
ailments when they were injured. This represents a bald-faced denial of
the rights of all workers for just compensation if they are injured on
the job.
 The
Draft Benefits Policy Review is the latest offensive of the WSIB on
behalf of employers to dismantle Ontario's workers' compensation system
-- an offensive supported openly by the Hudak Conservatives and
stealthily by the Liberals. This offensive is guided by the neo-liberal
outlook that says employers
will move their factories and other businesses out of Ontario if they
are forced to pay just compensation for workplace injuries and deaths.
The WSIB and successive Conservative and Liberal governments let
employers off the hook with low WSIB premiums and then implemented
waves of benefit cuts in the name
of reducing an alleged "unfunded liability." Currently the WSIB claims
to have an unfunded liability of between $10 billion and $13 billion,
depending which particular bookkeeping fraud is used to do the
calculations.
Injured workers and other working people are digging in
to oppose
the latest WSIB/employer offensive against the most vulnerable workers.
They reject the neo-liberal assumption that employers should be able to
cause workplace injuries and deaths with impunity as part of
establishing a "low cost" environment
for attracting investment to Ontario. Furthermore, they see the entire
campaign about the WSIB's "unfunded liability" as a deceptive manoeuvre
to push benefit cuts. Any under-funding of future WSIB obligations will
not be caused by benefit levels being too high and shouldn't be sorted
out on the backs of injured
workers. Any WSIB deficits are the result of the slashing of employer
premiums by the Harris Conservatives which the Liberals continued. The
importance of the alleged under-funding is also greatly exaggerated
since the WSIB obligations for future benefits is funded at about the
same level as the Canada Pension
Plan which is said to be in great shape.
In this election, demand that the anti-worker benefits
policies be scrapped and injured workers' rights be affirmed!
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