The recent announcement that Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board will be distributing $2 billion of ‘surplus’ rebates to businesses in February 2025 was met with shock and anger by the injured worker community. In response, Steve Mantis (Thunder Bay & District Injured Workers Support Group) reminds that the benefits lost over a decade ago that have contributed to creating this surplus have yet to be restored and have “left many permanently injured and ill workers in financial and emotional ruin.” (TBNewsWatch, Nov, 22)
Osgoode Law School Professor Emeritus Harry Glasbeek provides acute critical analysis of this ‘surplus’ distribution in his recent article “The Two Faces of Government ‘Largesse’ ” (The Bullet, Dec. 1, 2024). In it the author of the recently published Law At Work discusses how the government are taking “money from one class of voters, the working class, to give it to another, the employing class…”, upholding the dangerous illusion that employers in the aggregate pay for workers’ compensation, “rather than [workers] the real risk-takers and cost-bearers”.
On the 9th of December injured and ill workers across the province will join rallies to present the Minister of Labour with a clear list of what that money should and could have been spent on to address even the most basic needs of legitimately injured & ill workers first, before simply handing it over to corporations. [see details of rallies]
On the 11th of December join the Know Your Rights session and the injured workers group discussion on experience rating and employer rebates.