I don’t think many of us in the
Construction Industry could take the psychological beating
involved in working for a big bureaucracy, especially one as
dysfunctional as the WSIB. To us just having to deal with WSIB
is as much as we can take.
Over the years, I have participated in
numerous industry committees and initiatives and one thing is
constant; the WSIB bureaucracy believes we, the employers, are
the problem. The attitude seems to be; we are not safe enough;
we are not trying hard enough; we do not re employ injured
workers; we do not train; our safety policies are not good
enough and therefore you will be punished for your sins. Under
the present Liberal government this tendency has only been
reinforced with a constant increase in rules, paper work and
mean-spirited investigations and litigation. Once there were
rewards, now there is mostly punishment.
Another constant over the years, has been
the industry’s request that the WSIB be accountable for its’
own management and provide employers with measurements, that
will show us that the Board is dedicated to improving their job,
just as they demand of us. The last constant I will note is that
the Board has never provided industry with adequate measurement
tools.
Things have to change. See the
recent newsletter from Les Liversidge,
a long time commentator on the WSIB, that clearly lays out this
quandary with a series of descriptive graphs.
These graphs clearly show that employers
have been doing their job for the last 20 years and LTI (loss
time incident) frequency has steadily declined an incredible
80%. However, in the last 10 years, inflation adjusted benefits
paid out have increased at the same rate as accidents have
decreased. It seems irrational that the Board takes an
increasingly punitive approach in dealing with employers,
without explaining how the Board can be spending more every year
in payouts while dealing with fewer injuries, but that is the
sorry truth.
This is the question, the construction
industry has been asking for years, without answer. The major
issue here is that while injury frequency declines, costs per
injury have skyrocketed. In the 6 year period since the Liberals
came into Government, costs per injury have increased 72%. The
Board has increasingly been unable either to reign in these
costs or even explain them despite repeated requests. How is it
possible for the WSIB and the Government to claim that the
solution to the Board’s financial problems is for us to reduce
injuries, when they are letting costs increase exponentially?
The Board is not accountable to Employers and does not have the
moral authority to ask anything of us until they clean up their
act. There is a mentality and a system that must be changed to
improve safety and the financial health of the WSIB.
The latest issue is the new ‘Mandatory
Coverage,’ the Government’s initiative to force all small,
independent tradesmen\businessmen to buy insurance from the WSIB
at the same rate as employees. These individuals are the owners
and have no interest in being forced to pay for something they
do not need or want. And where is the morality to force anybody
to buy insurance from an organization that is a badly managed
fiscal basket case.
Oh I forgot, it was the idea of the
Liberals’ friends in the Building Trades.