K'jipuktuk (Halifax) – On Nov. 13, dozens of injured workers from Nova Scotia's industrial heartland gathered outside Province House in Halifax to decry the faults they perceive in the workers compensation system, and to demand a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the province's Workers Compensation Board (WCB).

“The system is broke,” Larry Maloney, vice-president of the Pictou County Injured Workers Association (PCIWA) told the Halifax Media Co-op. “It's moved so far away from its founding principles that its founding principles essentially don't exist. So we're calling for a Royal Commission to be appointed by the government to thoroughly investigate the system and actually make some true changes to it that make it back to its grassroots, to the way it should be.”

The WCB itself is legislated to be a neutral third-party administrator to a system whose costs are paid for by employer assessments. It determines whether claims made by injured workers are appropriate, and then pays out benefits from the money raised through assessments.

The WCB acts eerily similarly to an insurance broker, but is meant to be guided by the Meredith Principles, often referred to as the 'historical compromise.' In essence, the historical compromise means that workers give up the right to sue for workplace injuries, and in turn receive quick action for medical treatment and the payment of lost wages.

But according to Mary Lloyd, president of the PCIWA, employer influence in the process has upset the entire relationship.

“There's no historical compromise,” said Lloyd. “The only part of the compromise that's being upheld is that we can't sue the employer. But we're not receiving the benefits and we're not receiving the medical aid.”

Lloyd notes that medical aid, one of the cornerstones of the historical compromise, is now being outsourced to physiotherapy clinics. This does make some degree of sense, given that the most common on-the-job injuries continue to be of the 'sprain and strain' variety.  But according to Lloyd the physiotherapy option isn't an option anymore; it's an employer-enforced mandate.

“The employer is directing our treatment,” said Lloyd. “Right now when you're injured you're sent to a physio clinic, who's a service provider approved by WCB. They do a scan. They won't stand behind the scan. They say they're not accurate. But that's what WCB rests their hat on. Many specialists in this province as well as in Ontario have denounced this direct access to physio as not being best medical practice, yet that's what's being upheld ... Even if you do go to your doctor, you're denied benefits, because you didn't go along with the employer's request to go to direct access to physio. And the board will deny benefits to workers who didn't participate in direct access to physio.”

As for the WCB, their statistics, on the surface, suggest that Nova Scotia is becoming a safer place to work. In 2011, WCB noted that 6,616 people suffered a workplace injury that led to time off work. Stuart MacLean, CEO of the WCB, attributed this 27 per cent decrease since 2005 to a Nova Scotia “safety culture.”

Mary Lloyd doesn't see it this way at all, and notes that the direct access to physio – and the benefit refusals for those who don't participate in direct access – means that injured workers are less likely to report their injuries to the typical gatekeepers of the medical profession; their own doctors.

Lloyd also blames the presence of in-house doctors at some of the larger industrial workplaces as helping to fudge WCB's numbers, and also urges the public to remember that the WCB's numbers, which are often touted as being provincially relevant, only apply to assessed workplaces. The Chronicle Herald reported that this only applies to 72 per cent of Nova Scotia's workforce.

It also bears noting that the WCB had an overall comprehensive loss of $65.5 million last year, which CEO MacLean blames on "market volatility." Whether or not this shock to the pocket book is at all responsible for a decreased number of reported injuries resides in the murky world of conjecture.

“Stats are down, yes, but that's because many employers are hiding their injuries,” said Lloyd. “Many employers have in-house medical staff that treat the worker on the floor of the workplace. And you don't get to go to your doctor, and they're not reported. They are very quick to entice a worker by saying 'Don't report this. Listen, we'll give you your full pay.' You know, if you go on workers' comp you're going to lose two-fifths of your pay. You're going to go to 75 per cent of net. So it's not a hard sell to a worker that's earning money paycheque to paycheque.”

As for the ruling provincial NDP, the reaction on the day was mixed.

MLAs Charlie Parker and Ross Landry cruised the picket lines outside Legislation House, shaking the hands and smiling in the faces of their constituency base. Later in the afternoon, however, embattled Labour Minister Marilyn More noted in a press scrum that the “prohibitive” costs of a Royal Commission of Inquiry would shelve her party's addressing of the protestors' demands.

To Lloyd, it was all just another contradiction in a storyline that is seeing the provincial NDP continue to ignore the labour issues it held as sacrosanct during election time.

“This NDP government, when they were in opposition, stated publicly that the workers' compensation system was broke; it needed to be fixed; it needed to be accountable," said Lloyd. "And they were all upset and in arms about the lack of benefits workers received. Well they've been in power three and a half years, and nothing's changed. It's worse ... Our workers are in worse shape. We have employers being funded by the WCB system to fight injured workers for the level of benefits they receive. We've had how many increases in our power? Everything's gone up, but our benefits have been stagnant.”

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