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Injured workers demand pension hike

By MIKE PHILLIPS

TORONTO — Supported by
canes, and braces on sprained
necks and broken backs more
than 300 injured workers lugged
their pain-ridden bodies through
the bitter cold, Nov. 16, to the
Ontario legislature to demand a
sorely-needed increase in com-
pensation benefits before Christ-
mas.

Like so many times before,
when the province’s injured
workers first began to organize
themselves in the 70s, they had to
press their demands for justice
from the big-business govern-
ment sitting in Queen’s Park, in
person, en masse.

All they wanted to do was to
demonstrate their anger, with as
much dignity as anyone con-
signed to living on this province’s
meagre workmen's compensation
pensions can muster, over Pre-
mier William G. Davis’ arrogant
refusal to even acknowledge a let-
ter from the Association of In-
jured Workers’ Groups asking for
a meeting with him and an in-
crease in benefits before the legis-
lature adjourns for Christmas.

The only response from the
Tory government, the injured
workers received, was a letter

from provincial Labor Minister
Russell Ramsay promising the
cabinet would be ‘‘considering”’
such increases.

Typically, the government’s
response was to bar the injured
workers access to the legislature,
and a weak-kneed statement by
Ramsay in the legislature that he
would be putting the matter of an
increase in compensation benefits
before the cabinet ‘‘in the ex-
tremely near future.”

Not willing to be blackmailed
by the government or told by
legislature security and the On-
tario Provincial Police how they
should present their complaint to
the elected politicians, the injured
workers promised to haunt the
steps of Queen’s Park every
Tuesday and Thursday from 1-3
p-m. until their demands are
acknowledged by the govern-
ment.

17 Months Behind

A motion in the House, Sept. 22
calling for an immediate cost of
living increase in compensation
benefits was ruled out of order by
the Tories. ‘‘We say Davis’ $135 a
plate fund raising dinners ... are
out of order’’, the injured work-
ers’ association declared in a
leafiet distributed at the protest.

Twice a week we will be here to
remind him that it is very much in
order to increase WCB benefits
which have been eroded by al-
most 17 months of the inflation
which he considered serious
enough to cause an early recall of
the legislature’’, the association
promised.

Injured workers picketing out-
side the legislature said there
hasn’t been an increase in Denefits
since July, 1981. Becac>> the
Workmen’s Compensatica Act
doesn’t provide for cost of living
adjustments in monthly benefits,
the act has to be amended by the
provincial legislature every time
the Tory government is pressed
into granting an increase in be-
nefits. _

Such increases are few and far
between, and the government’s
excuse for doing nothing is that
for the past three years the
compensation system was being
‘“‘reformed’’ by Dr. Paul Weilor.

As the Association pointed out,
Weilor’s final report is almost a
year and half late, the White
Paper (containing recommended
changes in the act) was amended
with no notice to anyone and the
Standing Committee Hearings
(into proposed changes to the act)

OFL pians strikes, sit-ins to kill Bill 179

Davis challenged on economy

TORONTO — Backed by a united front of pub-
lic and private sector unions Ontario Federation of
Labor president Cliff Pilkey put labor’s economic
alternative to Ontario premier William Davis,
Sept. 16.

With a few days to go before the federation’s
annual convention, Nov. 22-26, Pilkey presented
premier Davis and his cabinet with a vigorous at-
tack on monetarism, public sector wage controls
and the government's bankrupt economic policies.

Pilkey challenged the government to implement
concrete programs that would begin to attack the
severe economic crisis caused by the policies of
big-business governments at the federal and pro-
vincial levels. .

Instead of stimulating the economy and creating
jobs, the OFL charged, “‘your government's over-
all response like that of the federal Liberals, of
Thatcher in Britain and of Reagan ia the U.S.., is to
allow the recession to continue in the hope that the
market will drive weak firms out, rationalize exist-
ing firms, lower prices and weaken labor by con-
fronting us with higher unemployment.

‘*The weakening of the labor movement is meant
to create an environment whereby corporations
can lower their costs (reduce wages and benefits,
take away workplace rights) and raise their pro-
fits.””

Neither wage controls, nor attacking the public
sector unions as scapegoats for the economic mess
created by government itself, will turn the
economy around the OFL said.

“The first step in overcoming this crisis is to
acknowledge the failure of the current direction of
government policy”, Pilkey told Davis. *‘It does
not offer a solution for meeting the needs of work-
ing people; it means short term pain and long term
pain. It is not only a diversion from a real solution,
it will aggravate our problems. There must be a
change in overall direction or government policy.”

Scrapping Bill 179, the government wage control
law on the public sector was the centrepiece of the
OFL’s economic alternative. The rest of the pro-
gram includes: the launching of an emergency job
creation program, ending the cutbacks to the
municipalities and social services, and implement-
ing a massive housing program, income support to
the unemployed and welfare recipients including
the proposal Ontario establish its own extended
PACIFIC TRIBUNE—NOVEMBER 26, 1982—Page 8

the OFL leaders stressed that government at-

unemployment insurance program to cover work-
ers until the feds put a program in place; selected
price freezes and rollbacks including the
strengthening of rent control legislation and
restoration of the federal subsidy on bread and
milk; and, a government-led industrial strategy for
Ontario based on placing the province’s natural
resources and financial institutions under public
ownership.

Citing Inco as an example, the OFL said the
nickle company ‘‘should have been placed under
public ownership long ago as part of a planned
industrial strategy to do more processing in On-
tario’s north, to develop a mining machinery indus-
try and to develop a manufacturing base. ...”’

Pilkey told a post-briefing press conference that
the forthcoming OFL convention would hammer
out an action program that would centre on the
defeat of Bill 179 but would also project labor’s
alternative program to the current disastrous help-
the-rich policies of Queen’s Park.

It was later reported that the mobilization cam-
paign OFL delegates are to consider the first day of
their week-long meet calls for selective strikes by
public sector workers, sit-ins at government build-
ings and a one-day, provincial general strike.

*‘We'll mobilize the entire labor movement in
Ontario against Bill 179°’, Pilkey said. Noting the
growing anger of workers throughout the province

tempts to pit public and private sector workers
against each other are doomed to failure. “‘We’re in
this fight together, we won't have any divisions
among our ranks for this fightback’’, he said.

Underlining this sentiment, Ontario Public Ser-
vice Employees Union president Sean O’Flynn
said that the OFL, public and private sector unions
alike, *‘spoke with one voice’’ to Davis and the ¢
cabinet.

The message he said he got from the cabinet’s
response to the OFL brief was for labor to show the
government its muscle. *‘What they expect from
us”, O'Flynn said, “‘is a great show of organized,
industrial chaos. The only way we’re going to get

this government to respect the labor-movement is 2]

to earn it.

“We're going to organize resistance to this law
any way we can, and we’ll do our best to make the
bastards pay’’, O’Flynn said.

E PHOTO — MIKE PHILLI

TRIBU!

have been ‘“‘postponed indefinite-
ly’’.

Not Enough to Live’ On

The injured workers were in-
dignant over being barred from
the legislature and frustrated by
the government’s stoney refusal
to address their desperate eco-
nomic situation.

Vito Esposito, out of work with
a back injury since 1975 and try-
ing to live on $275 a month in be-
nefits told the Tribune why he was
demonstrating and how he felt
about being blocked from going in
to watch his elected representa-
tives discuss the workers’ de-
mands.

‘It’s just not enough money to
live on’’, he said. ‘‘I feel bad (ab-
out being locked out of the legisla-
ture) because I’m tired and it’s
cold out here today.

“The least the government
could do is give us a cost of living
increase before Christmas. We
have a right to have Christmas
like the others’, he said.

With $110 a month just about.

the only income Franco Maring-
ola has to live on,~he was anxious
to have his benefit claim revised
upward and is in dire need of the
proposed Christmas increase.
*‘With the cost of everything al-
ways going up why is it that our
pensions can’t increase with in-
flation?’’ he asked. He also
showed a letter from the compen-
sation board inviting him to a re-
assessment of his claim but the
location of the the review meeting
was torn away from the letter.

The board’s record is assessing
disability is notorious among the
injured workers. Benny
DeAngelis a carpenter who is
completely disabled, as far as
being able to work is concerned,
from two separate injuries, dis-
played the WCB documentation
which ‘‘assessed”’ his disability at
40%.

His two disabilities earn him

only $350 a month, and his efforts
to get the board to recognize thal
at 50 years old with combi
back and neck injuries his job po
tential is nil. “‘They treat you like
you’re in prison’’, DeAngelis salt
of the WCB hospital where he
annually examined by three WCB
doctors including a psychiatrist.

Though he is in constant pail
resulting from a three storey falli
1964 and from being hit in thé
shoulder by a fork lift eight yeal
later, the WCB remains unmoV'
by his appeals for a better per
sion. ‘

‘They just keep telling me I’
crazy, that the pain is all in my
head’’, he said. ‘‘They don’t wan
to deal with us, or listen to us, and
that goes for the government, thé

compensation board and thet

doctors — they’re all the same.”
A man who has already lost #

great deal, DeAngelis gingerly |

peeks into a grim future. ‘‘If Wa
don’t get an increase maybe I
have to sell my home in order 1
live; what are you going to do?’

In Italian, Greek and English,

the injured workers discuss

how they should respond to being.

barred from the legislature.
Biggin of the Union of Injured
Workers, one of the organizations
in the association, summed UP
their mood when he announc
further protests. “They can’t d0
this to divide injured workers’ »
he said. -

‘Everyone has the right 1
enter that legislature to see hoW
our government works and how!l
responds to our demands
problems. We don’t want thé
government, the police or anyon™
telling us how many people can 8°
in to bring our complaints to this
government. If it’s not our right !@
in there when we want to then We
should be asking how this county
is being run.”

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suffer the indignity, Nov. 16, of being barred from entering the Hous”

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