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K
Tau) Sevens
7

with the committee, seen here outside the plant gates in Port Alberni.

Life is difficult for workers who are
disabled and want to get back on job

Behind all of the statistics of the
disabled are the true-to-life human
stories of what it is like to carry on

with a disability. When your work life
is cut short due to an accident or a

physical condition then the rest of
your life is an uphill struggle just to
make ends meet.

Two former forest industry workers
in Port Alberni are prime examples of
those who have gone through consid-
erable trial and tribulations in try to
get their lives together after losing
their jobs due to physical disabilities.

One case is job related and the oth-
er is related to a rare medical condi-
tion. However the bottom line is that
both individuals are out of commis-
sion when it comes to long-term gain-
ful employment until the system
changes to meet their needs.

Forty year old Gerald Samson is a
former Local 1-85 member who be-
came disabled when his back was ru-
ined after an accident in the booming
grounds at Sproat Lake logging divi-
sion. Mark Bakken only worked three
steady years in the industry at the So-
mass cedar mill before an unusual

bone disorder put him on the side-
lines.

For Gerald Samson, married father
of four children, the years since his
1989 accident at the booming grounds
have been a constant battle against
pain and disability. About five years
ago he was working on a crew which
was cleaning up deadheads in the
booming grounds and was taking a
rope off a deadhead when the log bot-
tomed out on the shore. The rope was
wrenched out of his hands and he
went crashing down. The results were
that his vertebras were snapped out of
alignment in the lower lumbar region.

When Brother Samson went to sit
down on a stump he couldn’t get back
up on his feet again. There he was,
stuck with a serious back injury.

Eventually Gerald wound up on the
operating table where the surgeons
took a piece of his hip out and grafted
it to his spine in a spinal fusion opera-
tion.

The pain never went away and it
took a year before he went back on a
gradual return to work program. Be-
lieve it or not the doctors and the

Pilot project
Continued from page nine

McLeman. Therefore a disabled work-
er will not be able to bump a senior
worker, even if the job can be modi-
fied for the disabled worker.

The committee recognizes that cer-
tain jobs will have to be analyzed er-
gonomically and that much work has
to be done to modify them for those
workers.

Monty Mearns, financial secretary
in Local 1-85, says that the union has
experience on various worker rehabil-
itation committees in plants and
camps where the local sits down with
representatives of the WCB and rehab
consultants in order to try and get
workers back who have suffered from
workplace related injuries.

“The only work we can find is what-
ever we can be creative about,” says
Brother Mearns. He says that the com-

mittee at Somass has its work cut out
for it and is taking on a courageous
task.

He also says that there is tradition-
ally a reluctance on the part of em-
ployers in being creative about finding
new types of work.

The local union had some success-
es in getting some disabled workers
back on the job at MacMillan Bloedel
in the early 1980’s before the reces-
sion hit. After the red ink flowed
many of those jobs, which included
office work, were cut and never re-
turned.

“Unless there is widespread change
to the whole system as to how we
deal with the disabled workers’ is-
sues, there will be little progress
made,” he said.

The Somass committee is on the
front line of that change. A lot of eyes
in the union and the industry will be
looking in on what is happening in
Port Alberni. There is a long way to go
and alot of hardwork to be put in be-
fore the committee’s goals are met.

¢ Fortunately Mark Bakken who suffers from a rare knee condition, third from left, has been able to find work

company put him out running
sidewinder in a bullpen. Working in
constant pain, he stuck it out for three
weeks and was running the winder for
up to six hours a day before he had to
quit. The pain was too great to bear.

From there on the story progresses
where he took some skills upgrading
courses through WCB rehabilitation
services. He wanted to take a scaler’s
course which would be relatively light
work compared to his old jobs.

Then Gerald had a serious car acci-
dent in which his vehicle was hit in
the passenger side. The accident jolt-
ed his spine and from then on things
have gotten worse.

Samson has often been in agony
with pains in his lower extremities,
sensations of burning, and shock-like
nervous sensations. He even has
snapped four teeth as a result of grit-
ting the pain.

The Workers’ Compensation Board
was quick to pension him off and ac-
tually did so before his car accident.
Now he has to support his family on
meager insurance payments from the
WCB, Canada Pension, and gets his
medical and dental paid for by the
IWA-Forest Industry Long Term Dis-
ability Program.

Samson says he doesn’t want to rely
on insurance programs and wants a
job. After being caught up in a claims
between the WCB and the Insurance
Corporation of British Columbia after
the car accident, he is frustrated and
feels trapped in the system.

He has been told by the company
that there is no sense in coming back
to look for jobs unless he’s got a letter
from a WCB doctor saying he is fit to
do so.

So Brother Samson is stuck waiting
for a job that he thinks will never
come.

“T feel like I could have gone scaling
before the car accident happened,” he
explains. “But now after three or four
hours on my feet the pain gets unre-
al.”

He has some perspective for the
disabled and wishes the system was a
little more human.

“T think that when I was first hurt
(on the boom) I should have been im-
mediately looked after instead of just
tossed to the side,” he says. “All of us
want a meaningful and productive life
and it’s no different when you become
one of the disabled.”

Now he is doing what he can on his
own. He has a family to support. To
prepare himself he is taking English
courses and wants to brush up on
some mathematics. Being a high
school drop-out in today’s job market
is tough. It’s tougher when your on
your own.

For Mark Bakken, a 32 year old fa-
ther of young children the future
looks tough unless he can get some

Continued on page thirteen

e Gerald Samson, left, joins Wolfgang Zimmerman outside North Island
College construction site where new Disability Institute will have offices.

nc

10/L.UMBERWORKER/JUNE, 1994