The province is giving $1.5 billion in rebates to ‘safe’ employers. But critics say companies with serious violations are still eligible

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Eligibility requirements are so broad that advocates say most companies will receive the money — even those with troubling safety issues.

Companies under active investigation for workplace violations, as well as those with high serious injury rates, will be eligible for refunds from a $1.5 billion program meant to reward employers with good safety records, according to the terms of the recently-announced initiative.plan to give surplus workers’ compensation board funds to safe companies

Under the terms of the program, companies convicted of offences, such as injury claim fraud, will be barred from receiving rebates. Employers convicted of serious offences under provincial safety laws since 2021, and those with more than one conviction since 2017, will also be ineligible. Over the past year and a half, 155 employers in Ontario have been convicted for serious safety offences, according to Ministry of Labour statistics.

Some of the rebate program’s regulations are still being worked out ahead of April, when the rebates will be issued. The Star understands that related employers are likely to be ineligible for safety refunds if one of their subsidiaries has a conviction related to a fatality., the North York industrial bakery where three temp agency workers have died since 2016. Two of the deaths occurred at plants described as belonging to Fiera’s “alliance partnership.

Even injury statistics can be a fraught way to assess workplace safety, critics say, because some employers pressure vulnerable workers not to report accidents. This practice, which is illegal, is known as claims suppression. outbreaks in their workplaces. The Ministry of Labour has initiated prosecutions against “several” companies for safety violations related to the pandemic, a spokesperson said.Defining a safe workplace is complicated, said Chris Grawey of the Injured Workers’ Consultants legal clinic, but depends in part on effective inspections and enforcement.Both the WSIB and labour ministry have faced scrutiny for their enforcement and risk assessment efforts.

 

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Sheer Greed, where's the incentive to work safe?

I am curious as to why no news agency is willing to talk about the crisis that is being caused by handing all this money away but still can't afford to help most vulnerable in our society it's provincewide problem made worse by inaction people are dying because of it

And again as usual the disabled living on below poverty ODSP are forgotten. We've been forgotten for years. But especially during the pandemic.

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