Joan Eakin, professor emerita with the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, was a recent guest on Thunder Bay’s Community Conversations. The cable channel show is hosted by Steve Mantis, injured worker activist and fellow researcher. In the three-part series, the interview focuses on Dr Eakin’s work on the effects on workers and employers of the early and safe return to work process and the role of stigma. She discusses how the discourse of abuse, arising from a presumption that that injured workers are taking advantage of the system, gets in the way of proper rehabilitation; the need for social safety also in return to work ….
See also Part 2 and Part 3 (total approx. length 25 mins)
Former Community Conversation guests in discussion on Ontario’s workers’ compensation system include Greg Snider, Janet Paterson, Eugene Lefrancois (Thunder Bay & District Injured Workers Support Group); Marion Endicott (Injured Workers Consultants)
Related reading:
- Eakin, J. 2010. “The Stigmatization of Injured Workers” (Presentation at the Canadian Association for Research on Work and Health Conference, May 2010) – no longer available online
- Eakin, J. et al. 2009. The Logic of Practice: An Ethnographic Study of Front-line Service Work with Small Businesses in Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board. Toronto: Institute for Work and Health
- Eakin, J., Clarke, J. and MacEachen, E. 2003. Return to Work in Small Workplaces: Sociological Perspective on Workplace Experience with Ontario’s ‘Early and Safe’ Strategy. Toronto: Institute for Work and Health.