Friday 27 June 1997

Joey Thompson The Province

The facts were intended for official eyes only:

A troubled marriage, medical disabilities and a drug overdose after the Workers Compensation Board axed his injury benefits.

Common decency and B.C.'s Privacy Act called for confidentiality.

But the WCB's documents relating to the injured laborer wound up in the hands of a stranger.

To protect what's left of the shattered man's dignity and to stay within the law, I will not publish his name. I didn't ask it, nor was it offered.

I do know that Mr. A was an attentive father and husband until late 1994 when he suffered a severe head injury and brain damage at a Kootenay job site.

He's been sliding ever since.

His memory, his concentration, his self-restraint, his wife and kids -- they're all gone.

Depressed and broke,

Mr. A overdosed on prescription narcotics last summer after he got word that WCB had cut off all aid.

Contrary to a pain clinic's independent evaluation, WCB staff had deemed him fit to work.

The WCB later reversed its decision, but meanwhile Mr. A just about lost it.

He confessed to his doctor that he was worried he might harm the WCB officials who cut him off.

The doctor felt Mr. A was quite capable of doing that, and warned the board.

Now, the WCB is responsible for safeguarding data on a client's personal life and medical treatment. Anything less is an invasion of privacy and a breach of Section 22 of the Protection of Privacy Act.

I'm not suggesting a WCB claims official deliberately passed Mr. A's info to another claimant, although it's almost preferable to the only other option --sloppy record maintenance.

The error came to light some months back when electrician Jim Gehon asked the WCB for the contents of his personal claim file -- which it's his right to see -- before preparing a brief for the royal commission on workers compensa

Included in the posted package were nine pages of intimate bits on Mr. A, whom Jim had never met.

Jim told commission chairman Judge Sing Gill about the incident during his 40-page submission (see my column of Wednesday, June 25). But first he ran a black marker through the man's name.

He also thoughtfully forwarded the private documents to Mr. A's lawyer, Larry Halbauer, whose name he knew because the WCB had included one of the attorney's letters among his papers.

Along with that letter was a lengthy assessment of Mr. A by a well-know pain clinic and an extensive medical-legal report by his doctor.

"I was astounded, to say the least," Halbauer told me after receiving the documents.

"The only way Jim could have got this material was from Workers Comp. My client didn't even have copies."

It makes one wonder how often WCB staff screw up and put personal records in the wrong files.

And how often are staff making decisions based on incomplete medical portfolios?

I put these queries to WCB communications director Scott McEloy. He admitted the board isn't blunder-proof, given that staff handle some 190,000 claims a year and about 20,000 requests for disclosure.

"We have checks and balances in place to make sure this doesn't happen, but people here are only human," he said.

"We take enormous pains to ensure the privacy of workers. I'm not saying it never happens, but it is rare."

McEloy said the WCB is working on improving services to injured workers and employers.

And the worker surveys suggest that's so. The latest numbers show 81 per cent of workers are satisfied with WCB treatment, up from 76 per cent not long ago.

"We recognize we aren't perfect and that we have a long way to go," McEloy said.

The board plans to investigate the breach of Mr. A's privacy and take steps to ensure it doesn't happen again.

I'll keep you posted.

If you have a comment or column idea call Joey Thompson at 732-2119 or write care of The Province.

Rob King was badly hurt in a workplace accident in 1992. After frustrating dealings with the workers' compensation system, he started the Yukon Injured Workers' Alliance in 1993.

King sees a disturbing trend at the Yukon Workers' Compensation Health and Occupational Safety Board.

It's one he believes all workers, not just those who are injured, should be concerned about.

Rob King doesn't remember the accident that almost killed him, and turned him from a working professional to a man who just wants to work.

The civil engineering technologist by trade was working as a foreman at a local construction site in September, 1992.

Without warning, a five-metre wooden pole fell onto his head, damaging his brain, crushing his spine, collapsing his lung and rupturing his pancreas.

"I turned my back on an activity, and that was my mistake," says King. "Now, I'm not in the same body I was before."

King doesn't remember being cut out of his clothes or much about the trip to hospital. In fact, most details of that day remain sketchy.

"I remember asking the ambulance attendants not to turn on the siren because it would hurt my head. I still had a bit of a sense of humor, I think."

That the accident left him with a noticeable hunch --and four centimetres shorter --is, tellingly, the least of his problems.

The transmitters in his brain have been forever altered. This has resulted in ongoing memory loss and made concentration difficult.

The Prozac the doctors tell him he will be on for the rest of his life has helped him to think better and numbed his depression.

Still, King often forgets what he's supposed to be doing when he arrives at a given destination.

For example, he routinely, frustratingly, forgets to put the gas cap back on his car after filling up.

"A lot of every day things most people take for granted are a chore. It seems I have to think of everything I do --things don't come naturally."

King has worked sporadically since his injury but has been unable to hold down a steady job for more than a few months.

"It's very difficult to deal with people and be part of a team because I can't think the same as other people."

To this day, he maintains his sense of humor and refuses to wallow in self-pity, even though he's cashed in most of his assets, plans to sell the trailer he once called home and lives off his credit cards.

He can't change what happened.

But he's fighting back against a system he believes has failed him as well as too many other injured workers.

King has been compensated for more than a year for various reasons. But he's had to scratch and claw for most of it.

Take his back injury, for which he received a $2,000 bulk payment.

That's more or less what it cost him to pay an injured workers' advocate, and various other bills, in the fight to get the money in the first place.

Or the difficulties resulting from his head injury, which the WCB has yet to acknowledge.

Two doctors have confirmed the injury has caused him problems; one specialist, sought out by the WCB, disagrees, and that's the version it's sticking to.

King says he has never even met that third doctor.

He started the Injured Workers' Alliance in 1993 as a support group and to try to change the system.

"I put out feelers to see if it was just me who wasn't feeling fairly compensated, or if it was others, too.

"I put the call out and people just started showing up at meetings to talk about their situations, their anger.

"And they left the meetings feeling better."

Today, the alliance has 46 members. They include injured workers, and spouses, sisters, brothers and mothers of those hurt on the job who are fighting for justice.

None think a free ride for injured workers is in order.

"They realize they can't go back to the same job, but they want meaningful work. They don't want to pump gas."

King doesn't blame WCB employees, in particular adjudicators, for the problems he sees.

They're stuck between injured workers and a management that wants to cut costs and keep payments from businesses, which fund the WCB, down to a minimum.

That can't be easy, he says.

"They have a tough job and they have their orders to follow. (For that reason) good people have quit.

"I've talked to employees outside of the WCB office and they're very personable people. But they walk in the door and they have to put on a different hat."

Still, WCB figures are an indication of management's increasing desire to placate business at the cost of helping workers, he says.

From 1992 to 1995, the percentage of rejected claims has skyrocketed to 25 per cent from 10 per cent. Meanwhile, there were about the same number of total claims in 1992 and 1995.

"The trend is dangerous for workers it shows that anybody who's injured is in for a tough time.

"And the end product here is the amount of injured workers who are rising up against the system."

The Injured Workers' Alliance supports the compensation system, he says.

But at the same time, it wants to see changes to make it more effective and compassionate.

"We're people who want to see the system corrected. What we're trying to do, for the next person down the road, is change the system.

"We're not saying let's change this so we can get a better cut --we're trying to change it for the next generation of injured workers."

The issue affects more than just a handful of injured workers, says King.

Like so many others, he always believed bad things always happened to somebody else.

"A lot of people think it's going to happen to the next person, but anybody can get hurt, so all workers are affected.

"It should be alarming for everybody to know that if you do get hurt, you can be left high and dry."

King is travelling to Edmonton today to look for work and see yet another specialist about his head injury.

"If I could get back to work, it would be good for me, for my self-esteem," says King, who's currently in a YTG job-retraining program for people who have been disabled.

Unlike a similar WCB program, support and compassion are abundant there, and it has actually helped, he says.

"It's a totally different story. They don't have a fund to protect, so they have a mission, and that mission is to get people back to work."

King remains upbeat.

Unlike many other workers who've been hurt, he doesn't have a family to support, so he knows he can dig himself out of the financial hole he's in.

"Things will work out, I know it. If not, I can always catch fish and trap rabbits," he says, laughing.

"You go through an accident and you still have 10 fingers and 10 toes, and two eyes and two ears, and people think that you're OK. But they don't know.

"My mom always told me to be careful or I'd get hurt. I guess I should have listened to my mom."

Fight to win compensation for injury took construction employee 27 years

Edward Alden, Sun Labor Issues Reporter,The Vancouver Sun

CORINNE LEE: she was fired from job WCB found for her after being injured

RON EPLETT: Benefits cut off despite injuries to his hand and shoulder

Elvino Lopes was a 26-year-old Portuguese immigrant working on construction of the B.C. Maritime Museum at Kits Point when he injured his back rolling a huge rock out of a ditch in 1958.

"I couldn't even tie my shoes any more," said Lopes, who could only work sporadically after the accident.

But the Workers' Compensation Board, established in 1917 to compensate B.C. workers for injuries on the job, for 10 years would give him nothing, In 1968, it finally offered him a pension of $19 a month. Lopes turned it down, calling the offer "a slap in the face."

So began a life-long battle with the WCB. After three back operations, numerous doctors' opinions that he could never do physical labor again, and repeated surveillance by WCB investigators who thought he was faking, the board finally awarded him $28,000 and a $300 monthly pension in 1985.

Lopes' complaint is unique only in its duration. No other provincial institution generates the kind of frustration, anger, despair and outrage that thousands of injured workers feel about the Workers' Compensation Board. As one Port Hardy worker wrote to Birgit Lund, who heads the Injured Workers Human Rights Group of B.C.: "I am angry and dispirited that I have seen criminals get better treatment than I received."

Many tell of years of delay, abuse and torment at the hands of the adjudicators, board doctors, and rehabilitation counsellors who occupy the sprawling WCB compound on Westminster Highway in Richmond.

These workers complain of board doctors who insist they are fine despite multiple outside opinions to the contrary. And they say they are treated like file numbers rather than human beings, shuffled among a dozen or more adjudicators and counselors.

In 1994, the provincial ombudsman dealt with 1,031 WCB complaints, so many that Ombudsman Dulcie McCallum said she persuaded the WCB to set up an internal ombudsman's office to reduce the load.

Barrie Alden, president of United Injured & Disabled Workers Association of B.C., calls the board's treatment of seriously injured workers "a terrible social and economic tragedy that has been neatly hidden."

The Royal Commission on the WCB, set up by the provincial government, has the task of sorting through these tales of woe and figuring out why an institution whose mandate is to help injured workers so often seems to become their worst enemy.

As Judge Gurmail Singh Gill, who heads the commission, put it following a hearing this week in New Westminster: "The intensity of the emotions involved is overwhelming. It hits you full force every day. Part of our job is to get at why they feel that way."

These are the kinds of stories the commission heard, and will hear in the next three months as it travels around the province:

- Ron Eplett. The 56-year-old Eplett was working at Weston Bakeries in Burnaby in 1992 when his right hand was crushed in a slicing machine. He was put on WCB benefits to replace his lost wages, and numerous specialists said he would never use his hand fully again.

While going through the board's program in 1994 to evaluate what other work he might be capable of doing, he separated his left shoulder in the board's own woodworking shop, badly aggravating an old injury. His arm remains in a sling today, with seriously damaged nerves. He's made 10 attempts to return to work, but says he is simply incapable of physical work.

Despite his injuries, both of which required surgery, a WCB doctor who examined him in 1995 concluded nothing was wrong with his hand or shoulder. The board cut off his benefits in August, 1995. He appealed, but no decision has yet been reached.

"I've had no income, I was forced to seek welfare, our life savings are gone, we lost our townhouse, we lost both family cars, my wife is being treated for depression, and I'm getting close there myself," said Eplett. "I'm very desperate."

- Corinne Lee. In April, 1990, Lee had been working for two weeks spooling copper cables at Pirelli Cables in Surrey, when she caught her left hand inside the moving spool. She was flung around, smashing her face and head, mangling her left leg and breaking bones throughout her body. She was given WCB benefits, and remained on compensation until 1994.

She couldn't return to her old job, however, and in 1994 the board helped her find a new one building computer cables. But Lee says her employers and co-workers had all been told she was a WCB claimant, and that her wages were being paid in part by the board. They even knew her medical and psychological case history. "They knew my whole file," she said. "I was blacklisted."

Her file, she says, is a mess, containing all sorts of lies and mistakes, and even bits of other claimants files mixed in with her own.

Lee was fired from the job, and two days later was cut off all benefits. Her case remains mired in appeals. "I lost all my savings, my car, my mobile home. I was forced on social assistance. You try living on fresh air and sunshine and see how far you get."

When the WCB was established in 1917, its purpose was to offer some certainty to both workers and employers by taking workplace injuries out of the courts and turning responsibility over to a single government agency. By giving up their right to sue, workers gained a "no-fault" system of insurance to support them if they were hurt on the job, while employers protected themselves from potentially massive lawsuits.

The WCB is funded by taxes on about 145,000 employers in the province, who pay an average of $2.34 per $100 of their total payroll -- which can add up to millions of dollars for B.C.'s largest companies. Certain industries where workplace injuries are more frequent, such as forestry and construction, pay much higher rates.

The Workers' Compensation Act, substantially unchanged for 80 years, gives the board "exclusive jurisdiction" over "all matters of fact and law" regarding injured workers. The decisions of the board are "final and conclusive" and not subject to any review by the courts.

And there are hundreds of thousands of decisions made every year. In 1996, more than 189,000 new claims were reported to the WCB, and just over $1 billion was paid in benefits. The board employs more than 2,400 people full-time.

For most B.C. workers, most of the time, the system works just fine. For instance, of the 40,000 workers a year who suffer soft tissue injuries such as back strain, 24,000 of them are back at work in four weeks, and all but about 6,000 are back after 10 weeks. Payment of claims for wages lost is generally routine in these cases.

A recent review of the WCB by the W.E. Upjohn Institute concluded that benefit rates are among the highest in Canada, and the over-all financial performance and cost to employers among the best in North America.

But for those whose injuries are too severe to return to their old jobs, it's another matter entirely. Ron Buchhorn, who heads compensation services for the WCB, said 50 per cent of workers off the job more than six months, and 80 per cent of those off more than 12 months, never return to work.

They wind up on the treadmill of doctors' examinations, disability pension appeals, aptitude tests, physical evaluations and vocational counselling -- a treadmill that can run for years and leave a worker angry and destitute.

Take James Walker. The 36-year-old Walker was a correctional officer at Kent Institution in Mission in February, 1993, when he slipped and fell full force on his right knee into a concrete and metal grating. His knee was injured so badly he could not return to his former job, a fact all his doctors agreed on.

So the board decided to retrain him for another line of work. While Walker has only a Grade 5 education, tests showed him to be extraordinarily smart and capable. His second WCB vocational rehabilitation consultant wrote that he "has the potential to train at nearly any occupation level" and is capable of pursuing graduate level studies.

What Walker wanted from the board was modest -- six to 12 months of retraining in electronics to allow him to find a job at his previous income of $38,000. Instead, his consultant urged on him a much more ambitious program -- four years of university, and possibly law school, to be paid partly by the board but mostly by Walker himself. He was given short-term training as a "life skills coach," which would get him a job such as a teacher's assistant or youth worker paying much less than his previous work. That job was supposed to support his university studies. Total cost for the WCB, $14,700.

By the summer of 1996, Walker had done everything the board asked: finished his training, completed high school equivalence, and received high marks at two university-level courses at BCIT. But he couldn't get paying work.

Nonetheless, on July 15, a third vocational consultant informed him that, since he had been retrained as a life-skills coach, "we have more than met our mandate in providing you with sufficient assistance in successfully returning you to work." The agreement to assist him in pursuing a B.A. "was denied." His benefits were cut off.

Walker has appealed the decision, but since last August has had no money and has been forced to seek emergency welfare assistance.

"They weren't working with me, they were working on their own," said Walker of the eight adjudicators and consultants who handled his file, many of whom he never met face-to-face. "Nothing I said had any impact on them.

"It's been a shocking experience," he said. "I certainly never expected to be treated this way."

Walker's experience is hardly unique. Indeed, he appears to have been treated better than many. Corinne Lee testified before the Royal Commission that one of her vocational consultants told her that "because I can't do a stand-up job, I should become a hooker. I can do that job lying down."

Ron Selecki, injured working for B.C. Rail, testified he told his consultant he couldn't sleep nights, and was advised to work telephone sex lines.

The W.E. Upjohn study concluded the WCB's vocational rehabilitation program is "critically deficient," with inadequate supervision, inexperienced consultants and poor training.

"What are these workers supposed to do?," said Joseph Jachimowicz, a Vancouver lawyer who represents Walker. "They can sit there nine months or 10 months. The patently bad decisions will be overturned on appeal. But you're looking at somebody who's got no money for months. It's a huge problem."

Walker's appeal may well succeed. In almost 40 per cent of the roughly 9,000 appeals that go to the WCB's internal review board, the adjudicator's decision is overturned. There are two other levels of appeal that have similarly high approval rates.

To WCB critics, these numbers are evidence that thousands of bad decisions are being made by the board; supporters say at least there are many chances to review those decisions. But the appeals can take months or years, and often injured workers are receiving nothing while they wait .

Stories such as these are far from unknown to the board, and the WCB's top officials say they are trying to change.

One of the huge problems, they say, is the delay when paper files get passed around from one WCB officer to another. Buchhorn said the board will put the entire file system on computers by 1998, allowing any WCB employee working on the case to access the file.

For cases that last longer than four weeks, a single case manager will be appointed to deal with the injured worker and coordinate services, hopefully eliminating the runaround from one official to another most long-term injured workers experience.

Buchhorn says the WCB is also planning to cut in half the number of board doctors, and redefine their role so that they will no longer be adversaries of an injured worker's own doctors.

"We as a board were in denial about our service a couple of years ago," said Buchhorn. "I think that's slowly changing."

But it will take more than promises to convince the thousands of injured workers who have confronted the board. The fundamental problem, argues Cliff Turner of the Injured Workers Human Rights Group, is that WCB staff have "absolute power" over the lives of injured workers.

As long as that situation remains, he argues, efforts by the board to reform itself are bound to fail.

COMMISSION'S TASK

Background on the Royal Commission on Workers' Compensation:

- The provincial government has appointed Judge Gurmail S. Gill, Oksana Exell and Gerry Stoney to review the entire system of workers' compensation in B.C.

- Established in 1917, the WCB is responsible for supporting any B.C. worker injured on the job. It handled 190,000 claims last year and paid out more than $1 billion in benefits.

- The Workers' Compensation Act gives the WCB "exclusive jurisdiction" over "all matters of fact and law" regarding the treatment of injured workers.

- The commission began hearings April 2 in Powell River and will tour the province until the end of July.

- Vancouver hearings will take place May 14-16 at the Robson Square Conference Centre.

- The final report is due Sept. 30, 1998.

Joey Thompson: More than one kind of courage
After half his face was mangled in a sawmill accident, Jim Gehon had to contend with WCB suspicion and delay

Wednesday 25 June 1997

Joey Thompson The Province The human spirit is heroically strong. When feeling blue I need only look around; inevitably I meet someone whose courage in the midst of tragedy casts a telling light on my petty grievances.

Jim Gehon is such a man.

One half of his swarthy face has been patched and pinned with so much hardware his two kids tagged him the Terminator.

Five plates, 19 screws and a twist of wire tether the muscle and tissue to the right side of his skull.

The flesh of his cheek, jaw and neck was ripped from the facial bone when a debarking machine grabbed his face during a routine electrical task at a Vernon sawmill eight years ago.

The contraption skinned his face within a centimetre of his brain, crushed his facial bones, tore the right ear in two, totalled one eye and split the base of his skull.

He was 31.

That side is frozen now, except for the guest twitches and pool of drool that collects when he employs a straw to draw his morning coffee.

When Jim looks in the mirror he sees a twisted, disfigured face.

But when his young family look into those deep, anguished eyes they recognize a hero.

Judge Sing Gill, chairman of the Royal Commission on the Workers Compensation System, has listened to Jim and 571 other British Columbians since hearings began in April 1996.

And there's a month of submissions from the Kootenays and northern B.C. still to come, not to mention 3,000 or so mail-ins.

From Vernon to Victoria, Revelstoke to Richmond, Penticton to Powell River, you name it, the judge and his independent road show have been there, or soon will be.

Thirty-eight communities in all.

"It takes a lot of courage for an injured worker to get up and tell his story," Gill said in a telephone interview from Castlegar.

"Most are looking for greater input into decisions, more accountability from a board which collects and pays out $1 billion a year, and a swifter appeal process."

Gill is to submit the first chapter of the commission's findings this fall to the B.C. government. The second instalment is due in September 1998. It'll cost taxpayers about $6 million.

Jim spent months polishing his 40-page, single-spaced report. He and wife Debbie motored to Surrey from their Okanagan home last Saturday for a scheduled 1:50 p.m. briefing before the three-member panel.

Twenty minutes per submission, 2 1/2 minutes for each year he and a team of specialists have spent pleading with the Workers Compensation Board for financial assistance for Jim's multi-treatments.

Jim told Gill he can't smile for his kids, ages 11 and nine, or kiss his wife the way he used to. But they don't complain.

He spoke of the June 1989 terror that changed his life, a nightmare that still grips him:

"My head and face sounded like an egg shell crunching. I used my hand to push my face back towards my head.

"It felt like pieces of meat (were) hanging from my face. There was blood spurting everywhere, the smell was cold."

Jim had a shopping list of needs after surgeons artfully rebuilt his face: Personal care and home maintenance help, periodontal (gum) and jaw treatment, eye medication and patches, facial therapy, pain medicine and dark glasses to shade his ulcer-racked eyes from the light, to name a few.

It would take a book to detail the WCB-related documents, medical reports, requests, rejections and appeals Jim has accumulated over the past eight years.

The 100 or more letters he's written to WCB and the pleas by at least 10 doctors on his behalf tell some of the story.

The rest is to be found in the fact that while Jim has accessed boxes of his personal information from the board and through access-to-information legislation, WCB insisted that 32 reports remain off-limits.

The fact that through access legislation Jim discovered WCB had photocopied pages of a personal diary he kept in his knapsack.

The fact that it took two years for a claims adjudicator to agree to pay for facial therapy, time enough for Jim's nerve network to develop facial spasms that no treatment can undo.

The fact that most requests for help were repeatedly denied until his date with a review panel, usually about two years later. Then, with only days to go before the hearing, Jim would magically get the go-ahead.

The electrician who once pulled in $58,000 a year said it was all he could do to keep a grip on life through the fog of pain, depression and drugs. It got so bad the ombudsman's office took up his case and requested that WCB review a number of its decisions.

"My wife still loves me and tells me I look to her the way I've always looked . . ." he told the inquiry.

"My doctors think of me as a man who has gone through unbelievable hardships and managed to keep my life and family intact.

"My children think of me as a hero . . . because I was rebuilt.

"The Workers Compensation Board thinks of me as a disgruntled claimant fraudulently asking for entitlements . . ."

He's trying to change that. For the past year Jim has been part of an Okanagan-based injured workers' support group, which aids and educates injured employees. He's also prepared a claim-management guide kit for workers.

His recommendations to the commission are worth noting:

- That staff be made accountable for decisions that violate WCB policy.

- That an independent disciplinary board review complaints of inappropriate behavior.

- That injured workers be educated and informed of their entitlements as soon as possible after an accident. (Jim wasn't informed of his right to benefits until three years after the injury. By then it was too late to receive them.)

- That workers be permitted to see all of their personal file.

- That staff immediately implement appeal-board decisions.

- That wage loss be payable until at least the first appeal hearing (some workers have had to wait up to two years for compensation).

- That WCB prepare and distribute a basic how-to-claim kit to injured workers.

If you have a comment or column idea call Joey Thompson at 732-2119 or write care of The Province.

Welcome news came in late July with the Workers' Compensation Board (WCB) announcement that it had adopted the revised health and safety regulations discussed in public hearings in 1994 and 1995. The regulations have now been sent to the Attorney-General's office to be registered, and the final version will be released by the WCB once the process is complete.

The new regulations are the result of a major overhaul process that took almost six years. Many of the current regulations had not been reviewed for 20 years.

BC, at long last, will have an Ergonomics Regulation! Although somewhat weaker than the original proposal presented at public hearings in 1994, the new regulation will provide a means to require employers to address worker concerns about repetitive strain injuries, lifting injuries and other musculo-skeletal injury risks. These injuries account for more than one-third of all injuries reported to the WCB each year.

The revised regulations include many potential improvements to health and safety practices in BC workplaces, if employers comply with them. A major area of improvement will come in the area of Occupational Hygiene, with reduced exposure limits for numerous hazardous substances and other new requirements.

There are a couple of major disappointments, though. The Board made no changes to health and safety program and committee provisions, or to provisions for medical testing programs. We will have to look to the Royal Commission and future legislation to address worker concerns in these areas.

The Board intends to implement the revised regulations in April of 1998, once workers and employers have an opportunity to learn about the new requirements. One of the challenges for the Federation and affiliates over that period will be to ensure our activists and members receive the training they need to make sure they understand the changes and how they will impact on health and safety in their workplaces. The Federation's OHS Committee will be examining this issue in September.

Yet staff still sent the Kimberley dad a How Did We Do? rating survey shortly after teens Steven and Warren buried him.

It spoke volumes to the family that they had to remind the WCB that its injured claimant had put a gun to his head, beaten by persistent back pain and a heartless administration.

"Please forgive me. I cannot take the pain any more," Tony confessed to his wife in one of two suicide notes last April.

The 43-year-old mechanic advised her to let the cops recover his body.

". . . Don't go out yourself or let the boys go," he warned.

"Please assure the boys that what I have done is not because of them or you. I love you all very much."

Rose said Tony's back improved for a spell after he fell backward from the top of a road scraper seven years ago. Then it got worse.

Patient records show that during one month last year Tony paid 26 emergency visits to hospital.

"I could no longer hug or cuddle him," Rose said.

"For the last two weeks of his life, Tony was always cold. He began to have severe headaches . . . he was just skin and bones.

"He was in so much pain, and he said to me, 'When is WCB going to cut me off this time?' The day before he killed himself . . . he was stooped over like an old man."

Rose said the WCB aid was a series of on-again, off-again events during the seven years Tony suffered.

By August 1996, the financially strapped family were awaiting word on three appeals concerning benefits the WCB had held up for more than 16 months.

The review board finally ruled in Tony's favor on all three issues: Wage loss, rehabilitation benefits and pension assessments.

But did the WCB budge?

Not on your life.

Tony finally had to hire a lawyer to force the WCB into paying the wage loss that was rightfully his.

On the day he opted to call it a day, he still hadn't been compensated for the claims verified by the appeal board.

Now Rose is fighting for the right to a WCB widow's pension on the grounds Tony's death was caused by pain and the stress of dealing with a cold-blooded bureaucracy.

As for a reply to the WCB's How Did We Do? questionnaire, the family sent a copy of a poem they dedicated to Tony:

God saw you getting tired

When a cure was not to be,

So he closed his arms around you

And whispered, "Come to Me."

You didn't deserve what you went through

And so He gave you rest,

God's garden must be beautiful

He only takes the best.

So when we saw you sleeping

So peaceful and free from pain,

We could not wish you back

To suffer that again.

WCB Regulations Come Under Fire

by JASON MERCIER
Morning Star Writer

Worker's Compensation Board has waited too long to help Edgar Vogel, he claims. Decades too long. Vogel, who will be 86 next month, was first injured on the job when he was 22. "I've had four industrial accidents and I haven't seen a nickel," said Vogel, a Falkland resident. "It's cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars for medicine and doctors."

"All those years and I've never seen a cent. They've got money for themselves but no money for anybody else. They take your money and you never get anything back."

Vogel said his first injury happened when he had lime spilled on his face. "if I hadn't of closed my eyes, I'd be blind."

His second injury came when he slipped off a fast carriage in' a lumber mill and ruptured his spine: He was laid up for four months, six weeks of that in a hospital. In another injury he pulled a muscle and received six weeks of treatment. "I got nothing. Not even a penny, not even recognition. It's the arrogance of it." Vogel has tried to have his claims heard, but said there has been little if any response from WCB's head office in Richmond. "I've written so many letters I'm fed up of even talking about it. This [picketing] was a last resort. As a fellow of 86, it's humiliating to have to do this."

Sandra Buckler, manager of WCB public affairs, said someone from the Vernon WCB office will speak with Vogel about his long-standing claim. "If you get hurt on the job, you have the right to appeal," she said. Buckler said there are several levels of appeal, including appealing only part of a claim and appealing to the medical review panel, which is the highest level of appeal. A review panel appeal is binding, Buckler said. "He has not used the appeal process." Another option Vogel could choose is to call on the WCB's internal ombudsman, Peter Hopkins.

"We have a complete open door policy," she said. Buckler said Vogel wrote a letter in 1995 to then- Ministry responsible for WCB, Dan Miller, stating his case. The letter said Vogel was exposed to lime dust in 1933. This led to his chronic obstructive pulmonary disease diagnosed in the 1970s. The WCB has only two claims files on Vogel, one for the lime accident and the other for bearing loss.

Buckler said the application for compensation does not conform to Sec.-55 of the Worker's Compensation Act. Article two of the Act states, "Unless an application is filed, or an adjudication made, within one year after the date of injury, death or disablement from industrial disease, no compensation is payable, except as provided in subsection (3)." Subsection three allows for exceptions to the rule. It would be this section that Vogel would use if he decides to appeal, Buckler said.

In Vogel's original claim, he did not state if he was a smoker in an.October 26, 1995 letter sent to Vogel from Dale Parker, CEO and President of WCB. Smoking is a major cause of Vogel's disease, the letter states.

Vogel believes there should be group insurance through the company rather than a provincial crown corporation. He also expressed concern with the salaries of some WCB executives.

Vogel and others with concerns about the way the Worker's Compensation Board operates will have the opportunity to voice their concerns when the provincial Royal Commission holds hearings in Vernon May 5.

WCB bashed

Fear tactics taint 'dehumanizing' process

by Russ NILES sun reporter

Injured workers fear even a Royal Commission can't touch the Workers' Compensation Board. Most will stay away from public hearings out of fear their claims will be jeopardized, says a man who will be there.

"We think this whole Royal Commission is a complete waste of time," said Ted Rowland, a Vernon logging contractor who hurt his back three years ago.

"They are their own god."

The Royal Commission visits Vernon May 5 to hear submissions. The commission was struck after widely publicized problems with WCB and how it handles claimants.

Rowland will represent himself and also speak on behalf of members of the Vernon Injured Workers Association.

"Nobody else would do it. They're all too afraid."

Rowland says all claims are different but his is representative of the kinds of hoops injured workers must jump for financial survival.

He hasn't been able to work since he fell three years ago while fixing a piece of equipment.

Now he's as fed up as he is discouraged by the web of bureaucracy, intimidation and incompetence he claims he was flung into when two bulging discs in his back landed him in hospital, unable to move one leg or control his bowels.

They call this a two per cent disability," said Rowland.

He had to sell his million dollar a year business and now lives in constant pain and constant fear of WCB.

He said threats and intimidation are common and speaking out publicly is virtually guaranteed to cause trouble with the claim.

"But we're some of the lucky ones," he said.

"We've been in business and we know a little bit about how the system works."

Apparently, that's what it takes to keep the cheques coming in.

In fact, when he had a relapse last year that landed him in hospital, the board cut off his benefits and it took a paid consultant - a former WCB manager in Vernon named John Scorgee - three months to write properly worded letters to get the claim reinstated.

Rowland and his wife Deb say WCB has lost sight of its role to help injured workers recover and, if possible, get back to work.

Instead they seem to impede progress with unreasonable demands and unrealistic expectations.

"I've found dealing with them (WCB) has been more stressful than dealing with his disability," Deb said.

The latest example is the board's rehabilitation plan, designed for him after more than 200 ideas of his were rejected.

WCB's rehabilitation expert has determined the family should move to Castlegar so Ted can attend college to retrain as a forestry technician.

"He can't sit down for more than 15 minutes at a stretch," Deb said. "How is he supposed to attend classes all day?"

Rowland's doctor, Ron Long, looked at the proposal and rejected it immediately.

"You have to look at this practically and ask yourself if there's any reasonable chance of him succeeding," Long said.

Not only that, after graduation, Rowland would be expected to hike long distances over rough terrain mapping out logging areas.

Given his physical disability, that's not going to. happen, long said.

He said he has been frustrated by WCB officials in his dealings on Rowland's behalf and knows other doctors who are just as unhappy.

"I've had patients describe it as dehumanizing," Long said.

"It seems like they don't consider the individual."

Long is writing a report to supplement Rowland's submission to the board.

The Vernon hearings May 5 are at The Vernon Lodge.

Some of them have been waiting more than 30 years for justice.

But they never gave up.

Yesterday more than 250 widows whose husbands died on the job were granted the Workers Compensation Board pensions the government long ago took away.

Halfway through a class-action court case the women had started, the government chose not to fight any more.

"We really did think it was an issue of justice," Premier Glen Clark said.

The widows are those who were receiving pensions from the WCB because their husbands had died on the job, but who remarried before 1985. A previous government ruling allowed those who remarried after that date to continue collecting their pensions.

Group leader Marlene Grigg was left a teenage widow with two small children when her husband was drowned in a fishboat accident in 1962.

She lost her pension when she remarried in 1966 and didn't get it back when she separated in 1973.

"There's going to be tears of joy today," said Grigg.

Not only do the women feel they've been vindicated, she said, but the cash will be useful to many who have been living on very tight budgets in their latter years.

The pension payments will be retroactive to 1985.

Clark said the cost is "in the tens of millions of dollars."

The money will come from the Workers Compensation Board.

Clark and Women's Equality Minister Sue Hammell paid tribute to Grigg and the other widows.

"They were very articulate," said Hammell. "They were very clear about their rights and very tenacious in pursuing them."

When the settlement was reached, a B.C. Supreme Court justice was in the process of writing his judgment on whether the WCB's action was something which could be justified.