Injured worker, Anne Marie had an appointment with Kathleen Wayne in her constituency office on Friday January 26, 2018. In the meeting, the injured worker told her injury story, how she injured her back at work. Subsequent to her injury, the WSIB discontinued her compensation benefits and determined that despite her serious back injury, she remained employable and able to sustain minimum wage job. However, that was not so, as confirmed by her treating doctors. Under the practice of “deeming”, Anne Marie’s compensation benefits got reduced drastically.
At the meeting, she and other members from the Bright Lights group provided other simple examples to explain how “deeming” affects injured workers and why this WSIB practice causes the minimum wage increase to negatively affect workers with permanent injuries. The Premier appreciated the illustrations. In the meeting she made spontaneous comment, “Why didn’t the Board just simply pay 85% of the minimum wages as compensation?” At the end of the meeting we presented all the petitions and the Premier agreed to ask someone to present (read) it in the legislature.
In a followup Letter to the Premier, Bright Lights again asks the government to step in and stop the Board from deeming injured workers to have jobs that don’t exist…. (reported by Rebecca L.)
This is a message injured workers are also taking to the government this coming Saturday (Feb. 3) in ONIWG’s “Where’s the love for injured workers?” action. See details on the Facebook event.