1.) As WCBs routinely deny legitimate claims and cut off
payments prematurely, these injuries go uninvestigated. The resulting
statistics grossly underestimate the REAL numbers and types of of injuries that
are occurring.
2.) Experience Rating - WCB rebates, kickbacks, fee adjustments
and dividends to "safe" employers create incentives for employers to hide
injuries. Employees are intimidated into NOT reporting workplace hazards and
injuries.
1.) As WCBs routinely deny legitimate claims and cut off
payments prematurely, these injuries go uninvestigated. The resulting
statistics grossly underestimate the REAL numbers and types of of injuries that
are occurring.
WCBs report "Lost Time Injury"
rates and other statistics for workplace injuries.
These numbers
are misleading and can be used in 'creative' ways to justify certain
biases.
These statistics are used: - by WCBs to justify millions
of dollars of rebates to companies while injured workers go uncompensated. -
by Statistics Canada to report workplace injury rates - by politicians to
boast about decreased injury rates (see article -
"Numbers don't lie - or do
they?")"
Lost Time Injury" rates are only those injuries ACCEPTED
and being paid by WCB.
DR. LOUIS FRANCESCUTTI (teacher at the University of
Alberta faculty of medicine and emergency room physician with a special
interest in injury prevention) says "We can't have the number of injuries
going down in the province as the number of fatalities goes up . . . That just
doesn't make sense." Numbers
don't lie - or do they? - " . . . statistics are being doctored . .
." (WCB
"Doctoring" Safety Statistics).
So as WCBs routinely deny legitimate
claims and cut off payments prematurely (as injured workers are reporting), these
numbers can grossly underestimate the REAL numbers and types of of injuries
that are occurring.
As
WCBs deny legitimate injury claims, the workplace hazards that caused those
injuries go uninvestigated.
2.)
WCB rebates, kickbacks, fee adjustments and dividends to "safe" employers
create incentives for employers to hide injuries. Employees are intimidated
into NOT reporting workplace hazards and injuries.
WSIB Rewarded Workplace Deaths For Years - When companies
get rewarded for mistakes - Flaw in worksite safety system allows big rebates
even when a death occurs
The Impact of
Workers’ Compensation Experience-Rating on Discriminatory Hiring
Practices - . . . most researchers have been cautious about crediting
experience-rating for lowering overall actual injury rates,because
experience-rating provides incentives for injury under-reporting . . .
Beforeexperience-rating becomes further entrenched in the workers’
compensation system, understanding any other unintended, negative side effects
remains important.. . . Like earlier studies, the results of this one should
heighten concerns about theappropriateness of using experience-rating as an
approach to injury prevention. - (Article originally printed in the
Journal of
Economic Issues; posted here by special permission of the copyright holder,
the Association
for Evolutionary Economics
OFL Report
Exposes Employers Getting Rebates After Job Accidents - Ontario Federation
of Labour releases report, the Perils of Experience Rating: Exposed! "The
Report shows that . . . This practice encourages employers to mis-report and
under-report accidents, to force injured workers back to work before they are
medically ready, and to pay workers sick pay rather than have them receive
compensation benefits. Anything goes to keep the employers claims history in
good standing. "Tens of millions of dollars are drained out of the WSIB's
accident fund each year by employers who have learned how to play the game of
experience rating," said Samuelson. "In fact, according to the WSIB's own
figures, rebates have exceeded penalties by more than half a billion dollars in
the last four years alone."
System Creates
Incentives for Employers to Hide Injuries Steve Mantis, the Thunder Bay
based secretary for the Ontario Network of Injured Workers Group, a provincial
umbrella of 22 organizations, says that while workplace injuries may be going
down, fatalities have been increasing.
'Safety Lottery
Encourages Accident Cover-ups' - Workers' Health and Safety Not a Lottery -
" . . . the new management approach to resolving health and safety problems
by draw . . . . a manoeuvre that . . . has had the perverse effect of
encouraging people not to declare minor accidents"
REVOKE REBATES
OFL CALLS ON WSIB - "The announcement today that the Workplace Safety &
Insurance Board (WSIB) has called for a review of the flawed 'Experience Rating
Programs' is good news, but it doesn't change the fact that tens of millions of
dollars have been drained out of the WSIB's accident fund each year by
employers who have learned how to play the game of 'experience rating'," said
Wayne Samuelson, president of the Ontario Federation of Labour. . .
."Experience rating reduces claims - not injuries," Samuelson said."
The result is that Canada cannot be sure of its REAL workplace safety
status!
Without accurate statistics,
workplace safety cannot be realistically addressed.
"It is absolutely dangerous to have a perception put out
there by a minister that safety is moving in the right direction when it is
not," said Martin. "You know the old saying: statistics don't lie, but liars
use statistics." - Ray Martin, NDP MP Quoted in "Numbers don't lie -
or do they?"
WCB
"Doctoring" Safety Statistics - DR. LOUIS FRANCESCUTTI (teacher at the
University of Alberta faculty of medicine and emergency room physician with a
special interest in injury prevention) - " . . . statistics are being
doctored . . ."
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.”
'Safety Lottery Encourages Accident Cover-ups' - Workers'
Health and Safety Not a Lottery - " . . . the new management approach to
resolving health and safety problems by draw . . . . a manoeuvre that . . . has
had the perverse effect of encouraging people not to declare minor
accidents"
FIVE DEATHS A DAY -
Workplace deaths on the rise in Canada (WCB's statistics flawed - underestimate
incidence of injury and death)
Numbers
don't lie - or do they? - "We can't have the number of injuries going
down in the province as the number of fatalities goes up . . . That just
doesn't make sense."
