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August 24- August 31,2003 |
Campaign for the Unfortunate
Queen's Park closes its ears to injured workers despite attempts by rights groups
By Pier Paolo Bozzano
Originally Published: 2003-08-10
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.
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