Let’s begin with the fact that a worker’s pain and suffering, yes that strange and unexpected thing that someone suffers when hurt, is now no longer recognised under NSW law. Yes that’s right. Get injured just about anywhere else in Australia and your pain and suffering will be recognised and compensated. Not NSW though….
The great workers’ compensation con
by Hayden Stephens, General manager at Slater & Gordon in Sydney
On Thursday June 21, the New South Wales State Government forced through Parliament a range of changes to the NSW workers’ compensation scheme that have effectively levelled the entire blame for WorkCovers’ $4 billion deficit with injured workers across NSW.
It is hard to know where to start talking about the deliberate onslaught against workers these changes represent.
Let’s begin with the fact that a worker’s pain and suffering, yes that strange and unexpected thing that someone suffers when hurt, is now no longer recognised under NSW law. Yes that’s right. Get injured just about anywhere else in Australia and your pain and suffering will be recognised and compensated. Not NSW though.
What else? Insurance companies can now get their own doctors to determine how badly injured a worker is. This insurer’s doctor decides when a worker is able to go back to work, and more so, this doctor can tell the worker what sort of job they should go and get. There is no independent court or tribunal to go to, just the ‘friendly’ insurer at your ‘service’. The insurance company is the judge, jury and employment manager of an injured worker.
Another concern; why is it that Barry O’Farrell constantly tells the community the workers’ compensation scheme is broken and will drive the state into economic oblivion, but when push comes to shove he back flips and lets the police, SES volunteers and fire-fighters remain in the old system?
Why does a policeman who falls off a ladder in a police station trying to reach a file and breaks a leg get more compensation for longer with better medical expenses than if the exact same accident happens to a nurse in a hospital?
The simple answer is because the Premier is scared of what would happen if he stood his ground and tried to force these essential service workers into a second rate workers’ compensation scheme.
Premier O’Farrell, along with anyone who has taken a cursory look at the reforms, knows the old scheme offers workers some protection while his changes leave most injured workers out in the cold looking after themselves.
We are not saying the police and firefighters should not get this coverage, they should. All we are saying is that if it’s good enough for them surely it’s good enough for everyone.
Another thing, every time the Premier talks about the $4 billion WorkCover deficit that is crippling the state he blames the blowout on over generous benefits and workers rorting the system.
Let me make few quick points about the “$4 billion deficit” that is sending us back into the economic Stone Age.
The facts are, according the Government’s own reports, that in June 2008 WorkCover’s balance sheet was $625 million in surplus, today it is $4.08 billion in the red – a $4.6 billion turn around in just four years. This has happened at the end of a decade when payments to workers and the number of serious injuries have actually gone down. So how could it possibly be the injured workers fault?
And just one final point on the $4 billion deficit – half of it, according the PricewaterhouseCoopers Government commissioned report, is due to bad investment decisions during the GFC – absolutely nothing to do with workers’ benefits.
Not since the Fine Cotton affair has there been such an audacious con.
Everyday hundreds of workers suffer horrific injuries at work. Their lives are filled with the daily grind of pain and rehabilitation as they attempt to get back on their feet. Sadly, some don’t return because their injuries are so severe.
[Source: http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4101118.html ]
Australia: Workers Compensation Changes Hurt the Most Vulnerable
06 July 2012
Article by Emily McMillan
Within days of the NSW government passing controversial legislation severely cutting back the rights and entitlements of workers injured at work, a fork lift tipped over at Sydney markets killing the driver.
It was one more statistic for the bookkeepers at WorkCover. Their latest annual statistical bulletin records 139 deaths related to work in 2008/09 – 75 killed in the workplace, 24 from diseases as a result of employment and 40 while the person was driving to or from work.
Workplace fatalities were up 42 per cent on the previous year. Deaths among workers aged under 25 were up 25 per cent, mostly in vehicle accidents. But overall deaths in the workplace are well down on 10 and 20 years ago.
In 2008/09 more than 133,000 workplace injuries were reported to WorkCover.
The good news is that major injuries have declined steadily over the previous 10 years. Overall payouts for injured workers were well down on previous years. Claims for permanent disability were down 42 per cent on 10 years earlier.
So while the government has been insisting it cut back workers compensation as payouts are out of control, claims for workers compensation are actually on the way down.
Yet the O’Farrell government has brought in a series of cutbacks to the workers compensation scheme that will hurt some of the most vulnerable members of our society.
The new scheme, which is retrospective in that it applies to claims made before the laws were passed, caps weekly compensation payments at five years for all but the most severely injured workers. There is a time limit on the payment of medical expenses.
Fewer people will be eligible for lifetime and lump sum payments because the threshold for serious injury is increased to 30 per cent “whole person impairment.” A worker whose foot was amputated would not meet this new threshold.
A fierce fightback by firemen and lawyers managed to force some concessions. Firemen and paramedics were included at the last minute in the professions exempted from the cutbacks such as police. Some claims for injury during driving to and from work were reinstated.
Lawyers warned the changes would hurt the most vulnerable members of the community. Australian Lawyers Alliance NSW president Jnana Gumbert said the changes will throw many work accident victims into great financial difficulty and hardship.
“It is simply not true that payments to workers need to be reined in as they had gotten out of hand. The truth is that the Global Financial Crisis and poor handling of claims by insurers are the main reasons behind the financial bleeding of the system. Once lump sum damages claims were mostly replaced with weekly payments in 2002, it was inevitable that the annual cost of the scheme would eventually blow out” she said.
http://www.injuredworkerssupport.org.au/?p=871