Workers Comp Is a Right!
- Christine Nugent -
 
Christine Nugent is
spokesperson for the Barrie District Injured Workers Group The
Ontario Network of Injured Workers Groups (ONIWG) has initiated
campaigns based on many discussions among injured workers and their
families on how to tackle the attacks in Ontario on their rights. The
Workers Comp Is a Right!
campaign was launched over three years ago and
it deals with a couple of things that are really relevant
today during the pandemic. One is the issue of deeming which is the
practice of cutting injured workers and their families off of benefits
because the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB), which is
mandated to provide no fault insurance for as long as an injury lasts,
actually does not follow that mandate. They cut workers off, declare
that
they can return to work even when their medical practitioner says they
are not fit to work. They use their own medical department to do this.
We call them "paper doctors." Recently a member of the legislature from
the NDP has put forward a private member's bill to end the practice. It
has taken us a long time to get this far. Ontario injured
workers have brought their concerns to the United Nations Committee on
the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; that deeming is a violation of
workers' rights.  As soon as
the pandemic started many workers lost their jobs. Even
under these conditions this practice of deeming didn't change. Injured workers
were still being told that they had to go back to work, even at their
own workplace which could have been contaminated, closed or unsafe. In
many cases there wasn't work there for an injured worker
to go to so deeming put them on a path of poverty, cut off
benefits and forced onto social programs like Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program.
What is really important now is
the issue of presumption. Under the
pandemic if a worker contracts COVID-19 or if a family member gets
COVID-19 passed on from a worker, then it must be presumed that this is
an occupational disease and recognized as such. The firefighters fought
for years on the issue of cancer. Now it is presumed to be
an occupational disease. No one, especially essential workers, should
have to prove that they got COVID-19 at their workplace -- but that is
what is being done. Claims are treated on a case-by-case basis and
there are thousands of them. And those are just the workers who know
that they can and should file a claim. Thousands of workers who should
be making claims are not. Employers have a legal responsibility to
report and to inform workers of their rights. Employers' past practice
of suppressing claims to avoid increases in premiums remains during the
pandemic. Because of the suppression and because we
do not have an educated
workforce on these matters, especially with 70 per cent of workers not
unionized, thousands of workers are left to fend for themselves. Even
in the unionized workplaces there is sometimes confusion about when a
workplace has declared an outbreak because information is
suppressed by employers who don't want to be shut down. When you have
decision-making in the hands of the employers and government workers are not able to get their bearings. Right
now, in the Ontario legislature, besides the private member's
bill on ending deeming, there are two others, one to guarantee
essential workers have access to presumptive coverage for WSIB mental
health benefits and another for WSIB coverage for workers in
residential care facilities or group homes. Many of these workers,
shockingly, are
not
covered by WSIB. Thirty percent of employers are exempt from WSIB in
Ontario. The actions of the Ford government ever
since they were elected have
been focused on making sure Ontario is "open for business." One of the
first things they did was lower WSIB premiums for employers. Then, the
following year, they lowered them again. We're talking about billions
of dollars going back into the pockets of the companies. Bill
238, the Workplace
Safety and Insurance Amendment Act, 2021 just passed
last week. It ensures the profits of the companies in Ontario, by once
again restricting increases in premiums. So how does that affect
injured workers or workers who have become ill from COVID-19? You
can't continually give handouts to the employers and have a
system that is going to serve the needs of injured workers and their
families, and that's the purpose of compensation for the last hundred
years. You can't sue your employer. It's no fault insurance guaranteed
for as long as the injury lasts and that's the part that doesn't
happen, through deeming. I'll give one example. We
had a big outbreak of one of the new
variants of COVID-19 at a nursing home in Barrie with many deaths. Many
workers, long-haulers, do not get well. If they test negative the WSIB
returns them to work, even when their doctor says they are not fit to
work. Benefits are cut. On presumption there has been a big
fight in Ontario, for miners made ill with McIntyre Powder, for workers
at GE in Peterborough, rubber workers and others. We say in those cases
and in the pandemic every worker who gets sick should be compensated.
I also have to mention the precautionary principle. One of our
members is a SARS nurse. She was injured in 2003 and has been ill and
on compensation since then. She wants everyone to know that one of the
strongest recommendations of the report on SARS was that the
precautionary principle should be followed so, for instance, if there
is a
possibility that the disease is airborne then protect the workers
accordingly with N95 masks. Since the beginning of the pandemic the
precautionary principle has not been followed.
This article was published in
April 28, 2021 - No.
35
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/WF2021/Articles/WO08352.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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