In the News
Advocates for Injured Workers Speak Out on Challenges in 2022
Steve Mantis, Chair, ONIWG Research Action Committee
Our research is an integral part of the fight of injured workers for justice. Our aim is to be able to put more political pressure on government decision- makers to reform the system.
We are trying to do three main things.
One is to take research findings and put them into plain, easily accessible language so people can understand them and they are easy to share. We have been developing infographics with research that we do and adding in some of the findings from research projects we have been involved in or know about and turning them into one to two-page attractive visual pieces to catch people’s attention and tell a quick story.
The second is we want to build a process to involve more injured workers and activists in partnership with researchers. When you add the lived experience of injured workers to the discussion about what the main issues are and how they are being framed, the quality of the research is significantly better.
The third is to encourage more research on the issues that we think are important. Some of that is building capacity, participating with university students, undergraduates and graduates, to work with them on their studies with the hope that they may actually start integrating some of what they are learning from us into their careers as they go forward.
We meet once a month. Our agenda is how to use research in political action. One of the areas that we have taken on as a committee is bringing forward formal submissions to the United Nations’ Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Our Committee made quite a detailed submission to the United Nations in 2019 that was primarily on deeming, as well as another in 2021 around the right to work and employment.
We are reaching out to other organizations both in Canada and Australia. We have linked up with some union groups in Australia who are taking action on injured workers. We introduced them to the June 1 Injured Workers Day and they started celebrating it in Australia. Through that discussion and connection they learned about our work at the United Nations. The idea is that if we get more than just one group making submissions about the challenges injured workers face, maybe the United Nations will take more notice.
Through this work, we want to gain more public attention. When we presented our brief in 2019, for example, we got a fair amount of coverage in the Canadian media about the issues. Often, injured workers’ issues are not considered important enough for the media to pay attention. We have made a number of presentations to community groups around this as well, and what we see is that people are getting excited about the fact that we are taking our issues to an international stage. It gives encouragement to injured workers. We shared the submission as widely as possible within our network.
Right now, we are focusing on developing more tools like infographics. If we could do a series of these visual information-sharing pieces, we might be able to get traction on social media. We are thinking about how to broaden the circles, how to expand, how to reach younger workers.
We did a series called Follow the Money. We see how the money has been shifting from paying workers to paying employers. You’ve got to follow the money, that’s what’s important in this world, no?
I also made a recent presentation on behalf of our committee to the Ontario Legislature’s Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs. They are holding pre-budget consultations across the province.
From the perspective of the Research Action Committee, we are doing our best to bring forward the evidence and documentation of injured workers’ lived experience so that it can be used for the development of appropriate practices and policies.
(Workers’ Forum, posted February 10, 2022)
