Documents are in PDF format but may be available in alternate formats on request. Recent press releases are available on Global Newswire
Universal coverage overview
Every worker deserves to have a safety net to protect, prevent, and provide during workplace injuries – attention paid to workers compensation coverage in Ontario has been lacking; COVID-19 has focused attention on why universal coverage is important …Backgrounder – The problem with deeming
The WSIB’s practice of ‘deeming’ presumes full employment. However the Board’s statistics show that about 40% of workers with permanent injuries whom the Board is assisting with placement outside their pre-injury employer cannot get the job they were trained for – yet their compensation benefits for lost earnings are still cut as if they were working. The result is a spiral of unemployment, poverty, disability and deteriorating health and a trail of destroyed families and lives.
We demand: Listen to our doctors
Workers Comp Is A Right campaign key demand addresses serious problems with the way the WSIB considers medical evidence and ignores treating health professionals’ opinions …
We demand: Stop cutting benefits based on ‘pre-existing conditions’
Workers’ Comp Is A Right Campaign key demand calls for the WSIB to stop penalizing injured workers for “pre-existing conditions” that are asymptomatic or part of normal aging, and return to the fairer system that only affects benefits in cases where there was a pre-existing impairment that affected the worker before their injury…
Download We demand: Stop cutting benefits based on ‘pre-existing conditions’
We demand: No cuts based on phantom jobs
Workers’ Comp Is A Right campaign key demand of an end to deeming with its pretence that the injured worker has a job they do not actually have, with phantom wages an excuse to cut benefit payments. Injured workers’ loss of earning benefits should be based on their actual earnings …
Fact sheet – Chart: Effects of WSIB’s deeming policy
The actual economic impact of injury on workers “deemed” by the WSIB, showing pre-injury income, net average earnings, loss of earning (LOE) benefit (85%), impact of deductions due to minimum wage increases, consequences for social support systems and the injured worker.
Download Fact sheet – Chart: Effects of WSIB’s deeming policy
Backgrounder – Minimum wage and deeming
While raising the minimum wage in Ontario is centrally important for all workers, there is a dilemma for injured workers because of the WSIB’s practice of “deeming” – when the minimum wage goes up, injured worker benefits go down. The practice of deeming – which bases workers’ compensation benefits on “deemed” or “phantom” jobs and earnings, rather than actual or real wage losses incurred by permanently disabled injured workers – is one of the WSIB’s more insidious mechanisms to cut people off benefits …
Fact sheet – Injured workers are part of the Fight for $15 and Fairness
The struggle for decent work and the struggle for decent workers’ compensation are inextricably linked. Workers who are in precarious and low-wage jobs are also at greater risk of being injured at work, less likely to report injury or unsafe working conditions, and much more likely to fall into poverty when injured. Fairness also means an end to deeming and “phantom jobs”.
Download Fact sheet – Injured workers are part of the Fight for $15 and Fairness
Workplace chronic mental stress claims in Ontario
With passage of Bill 99 (1998), the WSIB no longer accepts claims for mental stress conditions that emerge over time. Despite an Appeals Tribunal finding that it is unconstitutional and discriminatory to exclude chronic mental injuries, workers continue to be denied coverage, and must engage in a multi-year, costly and stressful appeals process…
Backgrounder – Clothing allowance
A clothing allowance is a yearly sum injured workers receive if they wear a brace or other device needed for their injury that causes clothing damage. After successful lobbying to restore full funding after the allowance was halved by the WSIB during the years 1996-2006, a further 10-year campaign was needed to ensure injured workers could apply for retroactive benefits…