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Defending Workers' Rights to Compensation for Injuries and Illness Ontario Bill 27 -- A Scheme to Pay the Rich with Money Stolen from Workers
The major change proposed to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act, 1997 has to do with including in the Act a requirement that the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) pay out any "surplus" funds to employers when the fund reaches 125 percent of "full funding" with discretion to pay out funds when the fund reaches 115 per cent. In debate in the legislature the Minister also announced that in 2022 the WSIB is reducing workplace premiums by $168 million, "another tax cut for safe employers across Ontario" and that "premium rates have now dropped more than 50 per cent since we formed government, leaving more than $2.4 billion in local economies across Ontario." Injured workers, advocacy groups, unions and the Ontario Federation of Labour made submissions to the WSIB in August during a short "consultation" period. They have all denounced the plan and outlined their reasons and their demands for restitution for injured workers. This change is another scheme to pay the rich with funds stolen from injured workers. The "surplus" in the insurance fund is the result of cuts to services, rehabilitation, and compensation to injured workers that has been going on for years. An all-out attack on injured workers was launched by the Mike Harris government's anti-social offensive in the mid-1990s under the hoax of eliminating "job killing" social measures and putting all society's assets at the disposal of the rich who were fraudulently called creators of social wealth. Successive governments have implemented cuts to compensation and other measures that deprive injured workers of benefits. The extent of the theft is so massive that the target of "full funding" which was to be reached by 2027 has now been surpassed, resulting in the "surplus."
This is part of what Minister McNaughton said in the legislature on November 1 in debate on the bill: "The WSIB is North America's third-largest insurance company. They have revenues of approximately $4 billion from premiums paid by employers and returns from investments. Right now, the board has a surplus and is in the best financial position in its history. At the same time, main street merchants and shopkeepers are struggling to make ends meet and recover from the effects of the pandemic. This isn't fair. This money belongs to small businesses in our communities. We are proposing to make it the law for funds to be returned to those whose premiums fund the board when the WSIB has 125 per cent of the funds they need, and we're giving the WSIB the option to return monies early when the fund is at 115 per cent."
The billions of dollars "saved" by the government on the backs of injured workers must be repaid to them through reversal of all the cuts to compensation and ending the myriad obstacles that violate the right of workers to receive proper medical care and wage replacement at a level that allows them and their families' financial security and dignity. Workers' Forum is reprinting below excerpts from a submission by the Injured Workers Community Legal Clinic to the Standing Committee on Social Policy which conducted clause by clause study of Bill 27, and the news of the formation of the Occupational Disease Reform Alliance to unite organizations fighting for justice for workers who suffer occupational diseases.
This article was published in Article Link:   Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca |
The Working for Workers Act, 2021 was
tabled in the Ontario legislature on October 25 by the Minister of
Labour, Training and Skills Development, Monte McNaughton. The bill
amends six pieces of legislation, including the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act, 1997. It has passed second reading, study by the Standing
Committee on Social Policy, and is now going to third reading.
The
initial justification for the cuts to workers' compensation was the
fraudulent claim that the WSIB could not operate with an "unfunded
liability." The promise was made that when the unfunded liability was
eliminated by the severe cuts to compensation for workers those cuts
would be reversed. Not only has this not happened but the
amendments in Bill 27 would make the theft of those funds permanent
with the current and all future "surpluses" achieved on the backs of
workers paid out to employers.
The
Minister's talk of "small businesses" and "shopkeepers and merchants"
is disingenuous. The Ontario economy is not owned and controlled by
small business people but by private monopolies that also control the
state and its institutions. It is to them that the bulk of the
so-called surplus funds will be distributed. Workers have experience of
the WSIB's practice of paying rebates to employers based on
"experience rating," rewarding allegedly safe employers for
reduced claims, a practice that was proven by injured workers' advocacy
organizations to have diverted hundreds of millions of WSIB funds into
the coffers of the largest monopolies in the province, sometimes the
same year that workers were killed in their facilities.