The Workplace Safely and Insurance Board is a good idea. I mean, it makes sense, right? You need someone to arbitrate claims and stick up for the injured worker.

Unfortunately it may look good on paper, but fails in the real world, where employees can launch specious and even outright malicious claims against you.

We’ve been victim of this before, here. Someone working at home wrenches their back, claims it happened at work — it makes sense to do this, as WSIB payments are usually higher than EI payments — and gets a decision in his favour. He then recovers at home while the company’s premiums rise because it is now a much more dangerous place in the WSIB’s mind. If it can be said to have one.

After all this is over, you are required by law to hire that person back or be fined. But this is of course bad for everyone involved. The employee gets their job back but is probably disliked by management and will probably be given every shit job in the place. He’ll be stuck emptying garbage and cleaning out behind the silo. The employer on the other hand gets back a person who intentionally defrauded them and the government of (probably) a large sum of money. He might do it again, so you have to be extra-careful around him.

I wonder if there’s a better way to do the WSIB than it is right now?

Tags: employment, WSIB