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Index July 12 2007
System Creates Incentives for Employers to Hide Injuries“ . . . there are strategies employed in the workplace to keep people from making Workplace Safety and Insurance Board claims . . . What I’m seeing is that there is a greater and greater disparity between what’s really happening in the workplace and what’s being reported in (the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board) . . . That is a system creating incentives for employers to hide injuries.”Trying to empower workplace for safetyA report has just been released showing that five per cent of the male workforce and two per cent of the female workforce across Canada have sustained an injury in the workplace.By Jon Thompson In 2004, the Ministry of Labour began a four-year strategy focusing its efforts on lost productivity as a means to spot unsafe workplaces by those who have lost the most time. In Ontario, there were 2.2 injuries reported per hundred workers. The ministry has nearly met its goal of decreasing that number to 1.8 by the end of this year. That amounts to 20,000 fewer injuries. What we’re doing is we’re picking up “the worst of the worst,” says Wayne De L’orme, the industrial program co-ordinator for the Ministry of Labour. “We’re spending more time doing more inspections in the workplace looking at the specific hazards and talking to the workers and management to make them understand that workplace safety is the responsibility of the people in the workplace.” De L’orme places much of the emphasis on progress in primary industries in what he calls “regional intelligence”, drawing from specific sectors like logging and saw mills in Northern Ontario’s regional hub of Sudbury. “We would hope that workers feel empowered to say ‘I don’t think this is right, we can do this safer.’ The employer will then do the right thing and correct the problem. The Ministry of Labour can step in but we’re trying to create an empowered workplace.” Steve Mantis is the Thunder Bay based secretary for the Ontario Network of Injured Workers Group, a provincial umbrella of 22 organizations. He says that while workplace injuries may be going down, fatalities have been increasing. “What’s really happening is that workers all over the place are feeling more vulnerable because of job security. If you’re going to rock the boat, your security is threatened. The empowered worker in Northern Ontario’s economic climate where we’re facing layoffs all the time? That’s a joke, especially among young workers.” Mantis reflects that the national study reinforces the calls that there are strategies employed in the workplace to keep people from making Workplace Safety and Insurance Board claims. When he sat on the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board board in the early 1990s, there were 250,000 claims a year. That number has now decreased to 100,000. “What I’m seeing is that there is a greater and greater disparity between what’s really happening in the workplace and what’s being reported in (the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board). I think the strategy’s flawed because those numbers don’t reflect reality. If they’re focusing their efforts on workplaces, the companies who are following the law, reporting the injuries and giving people time off because of injuries are being reported as risky workplaces. That is a system creating incentives for employers to hide injuries.” “Good health safety says not only do you report every injury, you report every near miss. They’re trying not to report anything. That’s creating, over the long-term, much more dangerous workplaces.” http://cgi.bowesonline.com/pedro.php?id=3&x=story&xid=322928 Also see: WCBs Report False Workplace Injury Statistics Back to Article Index |