Beyond the numbers

The province is paying companies to not report injuries at the workplace, claims the members of a local support group.

Although the numbers of workplace injuries seem to be going down in Ontario, Thunder Bay and District Injured Workers Support Group’s Steve Mantis said the number of serious injuries and fatalities are going up and it’s only getting worse.

"Stop this program of paying off big corporations for not reporting injuries," Manits said. "If you don’t report injuries then you don’t take corrective action in the workplace and you don’t address the risks and more people get hurt and that’s what we think is happening. But we don’t have the facts to back that up, but it sure seems like that’s what’s going on here."

Mantis said the numbers are hard to measure because companies are educated on how to hide workplace injuries from the Ministry of Labour and Workplace Safety and Insurance Board.

What’s worse, according to Mantis, is that WSIB has begun slashing costs. That has swamped the support group’s volunteer staff with injured workers who are no longer eligible for benefits.

Injured workers who were promised benefits until age 65 now have to go on welfare to make ends meet, he added.

"They’re making it sound like they’re helping you but they’re really subjecting people to a life of poverty," Manits said. "They’re making more and more barriers to stop injured workers from getting help that the system is there for."

The group was celebrating Injured Workers Day Wednesday, an annual event to commemorate June 1, 1983 when more than 3,000 injured workers stormed a Queen’s Park public hearing to protest changes to the Worker’s Compensation Act.

The committee was so overwhelmed that the meeting had to be held on the lawn at Ontario’s legislature.

"It was the first time, only time they had open-air hearings," Mantis said during a lunch to celebrate the day at the Lakehead Labour Centre.

"If people get involved, if they share their knowledge their experience with the government, the government will respond and that’s what we’re trying to encourage on a daily basis."

Although most of the recent changes have been made internally or at the administrative level rather than publicly, Mantis hopes due the upcoming provincial election will force the government to be more sensitive to public opinion and change current policies to help injured workers and their families.


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