Spencer van Vloten: Injured workers face an order beyond the pain of the injury itself

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You may not recognize the names Gord Dolyniuk, Kelsey Anne Kristian, and Cailen Vilness, but consider them for a moment. Dolyniuk was a 64-year-old truck driver, Kristian a 22-year-old quarry worker, and Vilness a 23-year-old construction worker on his first day of the job.

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While they came from different backgrounds, they are forever linked, being among the hundreds of British Columbians whose lives were ended by workplace injury.

It is for them and other injured workers that the Canadian flag flies at half-mast on April 28, recognizing the National Day of Mourning.

This occasion not only remembers workers who died on the job — including the 203 workers who lost their lives in 2019, when BC saw a record number of workplace deaths — but also those who took their lives in the downward spiral following workplace injury.

Why are workplace injuries so life-changing?

While the answer is partially the injury itself, often the greatest harm comes from the toxic interaction of financial, social, and institutional pressures faced by injured workers as they deal with WorkSafeBC.

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Following workplace injury, many changes occur for workers. They must deal with pain, immobility, and psychological trauma of injury, and they lose the benefits of employment. Financial security, a sense of achievement, socializing with colleagues, and the structure that work provides go out the window.

In an economically driven society, lacking employment also means injured workers can be targets for misconceptions that they are lazy, entitled, and exploiting the system.

These factors put injured workers in a dark place: Even just a week off work with injury nearly triples the combined risk of suicide and overdose death among women, and increases the risk by 50 per cent among men.

When injured workers recognize they need support and consider a claim, they often meet resistance.

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With a successful claim an uncertainty, and facing a total loss of income if they fail to show up for their job, many continue to work and irreparably worsen their injury as a result.

For those who do pursue a claim, more problems often arise.

Injured workers must go through an order to prove the origin and severity of their injury.

WorkSafeBC, the provincial agency overseeing occupational injury claims, forces many to undergo a roundabout series of medical assessments, with decisions about the workers’ treatment programs and fitness for employment ultimately made by board medical advisors often far less familiar with the worker than are the assessing physicians.

The drawn-out process prevents workers from timely accessing support, and often results in judgments that downplay the severity of their injury.

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All this is compounded by a problem affecting every stage of the compensation process: poor communication.

Responses from WorkSafeBC are slow and jargon-filled, and workers have limited opportunity to explain their situation to key decision-makers, adding to the perception that they are voiceless in decisions impacting them more than anyone.

Having to fight constantly, lacking influence over outcomes, and with mounting costs as they remain out of work, healing mentally and physically is a challenge for many injured workers.

To ensure the dignity of injured workers is respected, the following changes should be made.

WorkSafeBC must ensure there are economic consequences if management undermines workers’ health; disability attributable to the compensation process must itself be compensable.

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Complementing this should be enforceable standards to ensure that all stakeholders act fairly and provide the highest quality of service to injured workers.

Disputes over medical evidence must also be resolved quickly, and workers should be treated by the caregiver of their choice, with WorkSafeBC supervising minimally.

Finally, WorkSafeBC must improve communication by being more responsive, cutting jargon, and by having more opportunities for workers to communicate directly with key decision-makers.

There is no time to wait in making reforms, because the cost of more lives is something we cannot afford.

Spencer van Vloten is a community advocate, writer, and editor of BCDisability.com. He was recently awarded the Medal of Good Citizenship by the province of BC

Letters to the editor should be sent to [email protected]. The editorial pages editor is Hardip Johal, who can be reached at [email protected].

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