Back before Xmas, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) released a report ranking workers’ compensation systems in Canada.
This is fairly typical business-friend lobby-group stuff: quantify some aspects of a social program, build assumptions into the measures that your special interest likes (e.g., low premiums are good) and then release the report like it has some meaning.
Basically the CFIB wants to reduce premium costs by denying compensation for the first three days of injury, reducing the amount of wages replaced and reducing the maximum wages that qualify for replacement.
Vue Weekly did a piece on the reaction in Alberta that is reasonably entertaining reading.
-- Bob Barnetson
1 comment:
This is a rather sad reflection on the responsibility of employers to protect workers for injury in the workplace. If employers want to reduce WCB premiums rather than penalize workers by such archaic methods perhaps employers would be better off examining their workplaces for hazards and and ensuring preventative measures are in place. If we are to accept this type of thinking by the CFIB then we may as well return to the conditions that existed in Canada prior to the 1884 Factories Act. Why should a worker that is injured especially if the injury is unavoidable be economically penalized? Typical thinking of business - save money by screwing over the employee.
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