1. Report it to your supervisor
2. Report it to medical and make it very clear the injury is work related
3. Identify reliable witnesses, if any, and tell reliable co-workers how you were injured.
4. Call the Union Hall at (905) 682-2611 to get immediate assistance with filing a WSIB claim. Leave a voicemail if you do not reach me directly.

• INJURED WORKERS RALLY DAY
• WSIB COUNTER INFORMATION LEAFLET NO. 6
• WSIB COUNTER INFORMATION LEAFLET NO. 5
• WSIB COUNTER INFORMATION LEAFLET NO. 4
• WSIB COUNTER INFORMATION LEAFLET NO. 3
• WSIB COUNTER INFORMATION LEAFLET NO. 2
• WSIB COUNTER INFORMATION LEAFLET NO. 1

Led by members of the C.A.W. Local 199 Retirees Chapter, about 80 C.A.W. Local 199 members drove to Hamilton on Saturday, January 29, 2011 to show our solidarity with the 900 locked-out members of United Steelworkers 1005. We were there along with more than 10,000 others at the Ontario Federation of Labour sponsored rally and demonstration. The event was a powerful show of support for workers who are fighting to defend their right to a defined benefit pension and the right of those already retired to inflation protection.

U.S. Steel locked them out twelve weeks ago for refusing to give these up. U.S. Steel is clearly determined to starve these workers into submission in a fight with far reaching implications for workers Canada-wide. We must not let this happen. Our continuing support of these workers is imperative.

Bruce Allen

When you are injured at work Management is legally obligated to offer you medically suitable work. This obligation has become a way for Management to get you back to work and not collecting WSIB benefits no matter what your medical condition is and physical capabilities are. They pay lower WSIB premiums if they keep you off benefits. Your medical condition takes a back seat to GM’s pursuit of the bottom line.

In view of how widespread this abuse of your rights is, certain things need to be spelled out and understood in no uncertain terms. This is necessary to protect your rights and your physical well-being.

Any modified job offered to you after an injury must be safe for you to perform. This means it will not put you at risk of further injury or impede your recovery. Accordingly, you and your treating physician have an absolute right to see a specific, detailed job description so your doctor can decide whether the work offered to you is safe for you to do and within your physical capabilities. Indeed, contrary to what many supervisors think, WSIB policy expects your employer to understand what your capabilities are. You have a right to inform them of this and insist that your doctor make what is entirely a medical decision. Think about it. Does your supervisor have a medical degree?

Do not be intimidated. You do have a duty to cooperate in return to work efforts. You also have a right to assert legitimate concerns about the medical suitability of the work being offered to you. Exercising that right does NOT constitute non-cooperation. Doing this is no different than exercising your legal right to refuse unsafe work.

One other thing must be made very clear. Medically suitable work also means work that is meaningful and value added. Sitting at a desk all day waiting for a phone to ring is not meaningful, suitable work. Neither is staring at the walls of a cafeteria or lunchroom. Management is required to make a serious effort to offer you work that achieves outcomes and to not simply call you at home to say they have something for you to do.

WHEN YOU ARE INJURED AT WORK

1. Report it to your supervisor
2. Report it to medical and make it very clear the injury is work related
3. Identify reliable witnesses, if any, and tell reliable co-workers how you were injured.
4. Call the Union Hall at (905) 682-2611 to get immediate assistance with filing a WSIB claim. Leave a voicemail if you do not reach me directly.

BUILD ON OUR VICTORIES

In recent months there has been a marked increase in the number of WSIB claims that have been allowed without the need to appeal. This is because injuries are being reported in a timely manner and supportive medical findings are also being provided to the WSIB in a timely manner. Injured workers are getting what they are entitled to as a result. An important turning point has been reached.

This turnaround is only a beginning. Getting claims allowed and gaining initial entitlement just enables you to get the benefits and other forms of compensation you deserve. To actually get all you can potentially get requires doing what is necessary to go beyond initial entitlement and secure ongoing entitlement for as long as you are injured.

Securing ongoing entitlement requires medical reporting on an ongoing basis for as long as you are impaired. Securing ongoing entitlement is easier if you obtain any and all of the necessary therapy, medication and assistive devices from the WSIB backed by supportive medical findings. When the WSIB pays for these things it reaffirms that your impairment is work related. Likewise, if you don’t obtain these things via the WSIB you are not asserting that your impairment is work related. Furthermore, if anything happens that aggravates your work related impairment promptly report it and get it documented with the WSIB with my assistance. In addition, have your treating physician provide the WSIB with medical findings documenting the aggravation of your impairment.

Doing these things will spare you the grief, aggravation and anger that comes with continuing to endure a work related injury only to have the WSIB deny that there is still a problem. The WSIB will do this if it can cite a lack of evidence of a continuing problem. Significantly, if there are gaps in documented treatment of complaint the WSIB will assume your problem has resolved. The WSIB will also assume any subsequent reporting of a problem involves a new injury that is not necessarily work related.

Thus it is vital to build on our victories in getting claims allowed by securing ongoing WSIB entitlement. Collectively we must empower ourselves with the knowledge of what it takes to win entitlement to everything we have a right to and win it.

GET TO A DOCTOR
Recent incident involving GM workers clearly show that the WSIB could care less about the fact that injured workers sometimes have to wait many days before they can see their family doctors due to the shortage of doctors in our communities. If you are injured at work the WSIB expects to get medical findings right away to support your absence from work, regardless of this problem. If you do not they will deny your claim for loss of earnings benefits and realize their real priority which is to save the bosses money. Meanwhile the employer will trumpet their phony claims to have a workplace free of lost time injuries.

WHAT TO DO?
If you cannot get a quick appointment with your doctor there are other options available to support a claim for loss of earnings benefits. One is to go to a walk-in clinic. A second is to go to a chiropractor. Appointments with chiropractors can usually be obtained quickly and on very short notice. A third, less desirable option is to go to a hospital emergency ward. This only makes sense for serious injuries given how long you have to wait for a doctor and that the doctors at emergency wards are generally not concerned whether their medical findings support a WSIB Claim.

WHEN YOU ARE INJURED AT WORK:
1. Report it to your supervisor
2. Report it to medical and make it very clear the injury is work related
3. Identify reliable witnesses, if any, to your injury and tell reliable co-workers how you were injured.
4. Call the union hall at (905) 682-2611 to get immediate assistance with filing a WSIB claim. Leave a voicemail if you do not reach me directly.

May 10, 2004

Christopher Bentley, Minister of Labour
400 University Ave.
Toronto , ON M7A 1T7

Dear Mr. Bentley,

I am taking this opportunity to write to you concerning the changes being contemplated to Ontario ‘s workers compensation legislation. I want to relate some developments directly relevant to it.

To begin with I want to point out that I am the person responsible for the WSIB claims of the entire GM workforce in St. Catharines including retired and laid off GM workers. I have handled many, many appeals of claims that have been denied. Doing this has been an intensive learning experience and has made me acutely aware of numerous, profound weaknesses and failings of the system and, particularly, the adjudication of claims.

Arguably the most obvious and far reaching failure of the system is the detachment of Claims Adjudicators from the real world of the rapidly changing workplace. In noting this I must make specific reference to the automotive workplace with which I am most familiar.

The workplace in the auto industry has changed almost beyond recognition over the past 10 to 15 years due to rapid technological change and particularly due to the aggressive implementation of radical work reorganization strategies designed to facilitate optimal capacity utilization by way of relentless corporate restructuring, downsizing and making operations as flexible as possible. The result is an increasingly stressful workplace where workers are fully utilized meaning they are increasingly pushed to their limits.

This phenomenon is exemplified by the wholesale elimination of job classifications and open-ended job descriptions meaning there are effectively no limits to what a worker can be asked to do. Open-ended job descriptions are a license to push workers to do more on an ongoing basis. Most importantly, they are totally incompatible with the provision of medically suitable work to injured workers and put them directly at risk of further injury. In other words, they are totally incompatible with the concept of Early and Safe Return to Work. Yet they are more and more commonplace.

The resulting intensification of work is having horrendous consequences in terms of workplace injuries. Overuse injuries such as RSIs are increasingly widespread. Worst of all workers who are already injured are finding the workplace increasingly inhospitable and unaccommodating and this is often giving rise to serious problems with workplace stress.

Increasingly injured workers are suffering in silence and working in pain as a result. They are terrified of asserting their rights to medically suitable work because of the very real risk of having their employer tell them there is nothing else for them and throwing them to the street and, at best, putting them on WSIB loss of earnings benefits. Following that they can look forward to being assessed for a Labour Market Re-entry (LMR) program and pray that they will qualify. Otherwise, they end up with their benefits drastically lowered in most cases.

That said, LMR has been a nightmare for most injured workers. Injured workers who are in danger of being cast to the street by employers like GM are terrified by it. LMR should be scrapped.

Noting the above I want to restate my main point. Namely, that the WSIB is out of touch with reality in terms of dealing with the actually existing workplace in 2004. Its Claims Adjudicators are either indifferent or clueless as to what is taking place and are often much too readily willing to take whatever employers say about the workplace at face value.

This abysmal and persistent failure on their part is having disastrous consequences for the workers I represent. It can only be addressed by a dramatic overhaul of the system to bring into line with the actually existing workplace of 2004.

You have the power and the ability to set in motion the kind of sweeping changes that are demanded by this unacknowledged crisis situation. I look forward to seeing whether you are up to the challenge.

Yours sincerely,
Bruce Allen,Vice President
Local 199, CAW

Cc: Jim Bradley, MPP

WSIB claims should be filed for all workplace injuries. This includes injuries that do not immediately result in lost time from work. Injuries not resulting in lost time can be much more serious than they seem at first and can result in losing time at a later date.

When you file a successful WSIB claim for a no lost time injury the WSIB will pay for health care benefits for treating the injury. If you miss time later on (for surgery) you can then collect WSIB loss of earnings benefits instead of S&A benefits. But if you did not file a claim promptly for being injured you are likely to both encounter more difficulty getting your claim allowed and receiving the benefits you should get. Timing is critical. The longer you wait to file your claim the easier it is for the boss to dispute your claim and the more likely the WSIB is to deny it making an appeal necessary.

There are other good reasons to file WSIB claims for no lost time injuries. WSIB claims for no lost time injuries are as important as claims involving lost time insofar as both document workplace injuries and are a compelling measure of just how unsafe a workplace is. So when workers are injured but do not file WSIB claims the truth about how unsafe a workplace is gets concealed. The employer is not made financially accountable and will have less incentive to correct the problems causing the injuries the claims were filed for.

These things show why the belief that you only file a WSIB claim if your injury results in lost time from work is totally wrong. This dangerous belief has resulted in many workers being denied WSIB benefits they have every right to. This dangerous belief also has the effect of hiding the extent of workplace injuries and, in doing so, made workplaces more unsafe and increased the risk of injury for everyone employed in them.

IF YOU ARE INJURED AT WORK
1. Report it to your supervisor. 2. Go to Medical to report your injury and make it perfectly clear that it is a work related injury. 3. Note reliable witnesses and their names. 4. Call the union hall 682-2611 right away to make sure your interests are represented and you get everything you are entitled to.

Issued by:

Bruce Allen, Vice President, CAW Local 199
Bob McCready, Ergonomics & Placement Rep., Glendale Site
Don Clout, Ergonomics & Placement Rep., Components Plt.

Fellow Workers,
It has come to our attention that a number of workers who were exposed to the dust that was released from the construction area on the East Side of the Components Plant became sufficiently ill to justify a visit to GM Medical. At least two of those affected have also missed time from work as a result of this exposure. We want to take this opportunity to urge you in the strongest possible terms to file a WSIB claim if you suffered any adverse affects from this exposure and to do so regardless of whether you lost time from work or not. If you missed time from work you should claim for WSIB loss of earnings benefits. If you did not filing a claim will be a wise precautionary measure just in case there are long term health effects from your exposure.

To file a claim report your exposure to your Supervisor and GM Medical if you have not already. Then call Bruce Allen at the Union Hall at 905-682-2611 to make an appointment to file a WSIB claim.

Issued by:
Bruce Allen Bernie Hamilton
Vice President CAW H&S Rep.-Comp. Plt.

Local 199, CAW

PAAs ARE NOT FOR LOST TIME DUE TO INJURIES AT WORK
When you are injured on the job and your injuries force you to take time off work supervision may offer to cover the lost time by offering you use of your PAAs. Such generosity should be refused. PAAs are your vacation days. The time you lose from work should be compensated for by Workplace Safety & Insurance Board loss of earnings benefits not by your paid vacation time. If you take a PAA you are paying for the time off due to an injury with your own money. If you take a PAA you are helping to conceal the fact that an injury at work forced you to lose time. If you take a PAA you are simultaneously helping the boss to conceal the unsafe condition or work practice that caused your injury. If you take a PAA you are also helping the boss to get rebates on premiums paid to the WSIB by helping to lower the number of lost time claims the boss is responsible for.
But there is more. By taking a PAA rather than seeking the WSIB loss of earnings benefits you should get you are reducing the amount of vacation time you will take. Taking less vacation time helps the boss. It helps the boss because there will be less need to cover for vacation time. This helps the boss to get the most possible work from the fewest number of workers. That makes you more vulnerable to overuse injuries at work like repetitive strain injuries. The worsening speed up due to this corporate goal of getting the maximum possible work from the fewest possible number of workers is directly responsible for the growing number of workers who are working in pain and being crippled on the job. Given these things why would you ever use your PAAs for lost time due to a workplace injury?

IF YOU ARE HURT AT WORK
1. Report it to your supervisor
2. Go to Medical to report your injury and make it perfectly clear that it is a work related injury.
3. Call the union hall at 905-682-2611 right away to make sure your interests are represented and you can get everything you are entitled to.

Issued By:
Bruce Allen,Vice President
Local 199, CAW