• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Injured Workers Online

Injured Workers Online

Working Together for Justice

  • Blog
  • Sign Up
  • About
  • Twitter
Working Together for Justice
  • Workers’ Compensation
    • History
    • Law Reform
    • Workers’ compensation bills
    • Chronic Pain Victory
    • Research and Education
    • Bancroft Institute
    • Meredith Conference: “No-Half Measures”
    • RAACWI
  • Issues
    • Appeals
    • Benefits
    • Experience Rating
    • Funding
    • Mental Health
    • Poverty
    • Return to Work
    • Stigma and surveillance
    • Universal Coverage
  • Community
    • Ontario Network of Injured Workers Groups (ONIWG)
    • Workers’ Comp Is a Right campaign
    • Injured Worker Groups
    • IW Speakers School
    • Injured Workers’ Stories
    • Organizing and Action
    • Arts & social justice
  • Events
    • Calendar View
    • RSI Awareness Day
    • Day of Mourning
    • Justice Bike Ride
    • Injured Workers Day
    • December demo
    • Labour Day – a workers’ festival
  • Media
    • In the News
    • Press Releases
    • Fact Sheets
    • Headlines on workers’ compensation
    • Videos
  • Resources
    • Law and Policy Submissions
    • Reports, Articles & Papers
    • Practical guides & booklets
    • IWHP Bulletins
    • Library
    • Find Legal Help
    • Links
Home / Blog / Education / Celebrating Injured Worker Speaker School success

Celebrating Injured Worker Speaker School success

April 20, 2016

Monday was Graduation and Speech night at Toronto’s Injured Workers’ Speakers School (IWSS). Fellow injured workers, colleagues, and clinic staff celebrated with 2016 Spring graduates: Ruben, Seeta, Julie, Mark, Jenny, Heidi.2016 Injured Workers Speakers School graduation

Organizing the event were IWSS facilitators Kate  and Heather, Aidan  and longtime instructors Orlando  and Marion. A guest panel (Christine Nugent, Ryan Fritsch, Edie Strachan and Peter Tabuns) commented on each 5 minute speech by the graduates. A full house echoed the panelists’ common responses that they were inspired by the workers’ courage and endurance but enraged at their treatment after injury.Injured by hard work

In their speeches, the graduates all powerfully delivered their personal experiences as good, hardworking employees, valued until their injury – and  now dealing with a workers’ compensation system whose “principled core has been hollowed out” and which denies them fair compensation. In their individual stories, they put a face to workers trying to cope with a second harm – the one resulting from policies of deeming and experience rating, denial of treating doctor’s report, pressure to return to work before healing, inadequate retraining and benefit cuts. It has become a system that “seems set up for employers, not workers.” While each story was unique, a common theme was the need to fight for a just system not only for themselves, but for all injured workers.

Presentation of certificates was followed by a celebration dinner. Music was supplied by Peter Page channeling Johnny Cash with “WSIB prison blues” and Heather Cherron Von Atzigen with her also popular “We shall rise.”

Speaker Schools – education that empowers

IWC’s Speaker School began over 10 years ago as 3-hour classes in an educational program delivered over 14 weeks to give injured workers a sound understanding of the Meredith principles and history underlying Ontario’s current workers’ compensation system. Given that permanent injury means workers may be navigating that system and dealing with the Board for many years, if not a lifetime, the course provides valuable information on how Meredith’s non-adversarial workers’ compensation was intended to work. The success of Thunder Bay injured workers group’s course on public speaking skills inspired the Clinic, supported by the Research Action Alliance on the Consequences of Injury, to combine both aspects into a program to educate and support injured workers’ self-advocacy. Similar programs are now held throughout the province.

Filed Under: Education

Primary Sidebar

Latest Tweets

Injuredworkersonline Follow

IWO_org
Injuredworkersonline @iwo_org ·
15 Mar

Then & Now: Technology and the changing hazards in mining https://www.thesafetymag.com/ca/topics/technology/then-now-technology-and-the-changing-hazards-in-mining/439237#.ZBH4wPPGS2M.twitter

Reply on Twitter 1636048781316882432 Retweet on Twitter 1636048781316882432 Like on Twitter 1636048781316882432 1 Twitter 1636048781316882432
Injuredworkersonline @iwo_org ·
15 Mar

Bill C-224 Cancer legislation reaches important milestone in Canadian Parliament https://www.iaff.org/news/cancer-legislation-reaches-important-milestone-in-canadian-parliament/

Reply on Twitter 1636048154285215745 Retweet on Twitter 1636048154285215745 Like on Twitter 1636048154285215745 1 Twitter 1636048154285215745
Injuredworkersonline @iwo_org ·
15 Mar

Ontario roofing company fined after man not wearing fall protection killed in fall while working on a school portable - OHS Canada MagazineOHS Canada Magazine https://www.ohscanada.com/ontario-roofing-company-fined-110k-after-man-killed-in-fall-while-working-on-a-school-portable/

Reply on Twitter 1636047273758199809 Retweet on Twitter 1636047273758199809 Like on Twitter 1636047273758199809 3 Twitter 1636047273758199809
Load More...

Footer

Stay connected – get our blog updates
Copyright © 2023 Injured Workers Online
  • Accessibility
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy

The information in this website is for educational purposes only. It is not a substitute for legal advice. For legal advice, see Find legal help