Campaign for the Unfortunate

Queen's Park closes its ears to injured workers despite attempts by rights groups

Enough with a provincial Conservative government. Ernie Eves shouldn't expect even one vote from injured workers in the next election." The statement made by Orlando Buonastella, one of the consultants of the Injured Worker's Group, seems like a simple election statement, but is actually something more. The conclusion to months of stress to have the rights of a forgotten category heard has been often maltreated.
The conscience of disabled workers in Ontario and of groups that maintain their rights are completely clear. They have tried everything, truly everything to undermine the Ministry of Labour's "pig-headedness" at Queen's Park, or even better the Ministers that have succeeded in the last two years, prior to the retirement of the detested Mike Harris and after the entrance on stage by his successor Ernie Eves.
The doors of the Minister in turn, Chris Stockwell first and then Brad Clark, have always remained closed. The last responsible in office, actually, was only seen in a photograph. He was never in a meeting, and never in direct confrontation with someone in a high position or with one of the delegations of activists and injured workers of Toronto, who did nothing more than try to contact him since November 2001 to today.
From 1995 the Ministry of Labour has not met with any delegations of the injured, neither were they invited. There was never any participation in the Day for the Disabled on June 1 (while previous ministries have participated in all such occasions).
In the last two months, there have been encounters with Ministry officials and those responsible of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, the new name for the once Compensation Board, which is responsible for employee benefits and pensions of those who have been injured in the workplace. Seven meetings, all or almost all were concluded in the same fashion. On one side of the table were the injured workers, armed with a portfolio with hundreds of pages of signatures, numbers, voices, opinions and research statistics, while the other had officials that could care less of knowing the arguments of these injured workers and promised the maximum that they could: we will tell everything to the Minister.
"Justice not poverty," is the emblematic title of the May and June awareness campaign, but the summit at Queen's Park only listened to them from afar. "Brad Clark had met with the injured workers of Hamilton, but in reality," notes Buonastella, "only because there were election recourses in that zone, so they met with him as political representative, without confrontation."
The reality that Clark doesn't want to listen is always the same, "The WSIB does everything except assist those who are hurt in the workplace."
"They must really think we're criminals," comments Theodor Koinis with a sneer. "The criminals actually are treated better, at least they are listened to. But they have no time for us and it is only because we are not able to produce anymore. We are like an old utensil that can't be used and can be just thrown away."
There was no screaming or clashes in the campaign. "We were able to furnish study results, statistics and documents," adds Buonastella. "We're not a handful of angry people asking for money. Officials that we had met said that we actually had more memory of the same system on the questions of the injured, that we occupy them with questions that take up more time on the major part of components of the Ministry staff, and that at the end of the day our suggestions are precious. We have ideas and contributions to give, not only things to ask. However, to be able to do them we must first open a dialogue that is still missing."
What are the claims? Above all they are looking at the permanently injured who have lost work due to unfortunate circumstances and depend on the pension from the board to survive. The 1999 financial law had secured substantial modifications to the system of allocated benefits and have also cleared pensions and aid increases to costs of living. If the stipends and the pensions of all the other categories of workers increases every year to balance dollar depreciation and maintain possible purchases stable, the calculated formulas of contributions foreseen for injured workers doesn't guarantee any increase. "Everything is increasingly more costly," continues Koinis, "electricity, food, taxes... "
The results of a recent questionnaire shows that more than half of the ex-labourers who live off the pension or benefits from the board are considered to be living in poverty (32 percent) or are living just above this (26 percent). It is only 42 percent of the injured who are able to live decently.
"The worst thing isn't the money," explains Dante Lerra, who suffered a bad fall and a series of unfortunate surgeries which ended his working career. "It is that not being listened to makes us more useless, were twice less important."

Part 1 in a four-part series.

Publication Date: 2003-08-10
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=3027