Labour Market Reentry – The Ultimate Captive Student
When workers are hurt on the job, it may only be the start of their problems. Just wait until the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board sends them back to school.
I haven’t talked much about what I’m doing this summer, but I’m working at a student legal clinic where we represent injured workers through their dealings with the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB). It’s a good job, and I could write for pages about it, but it would be more than a little off topic for this site. What is on topic, however, is an aspect of what the WSIB does called “Labour Market Reentry” or just LMR.
In a nutshell, when a worker is hurt on the job the ideal outcome is to support the worker through rehabilitation and return to the same job. But sometimes that isn’t possible. Imagine a construction worker who has lost the full use of one arm, or a truck driver who is no longer qualified to drive because of some impairment. Then the WSIB kicks up their LMR program, designed to get the worker back on the market in some other job.
It all sounds very good, but really it comes down to some very brutal math. A worker who has been hurt is entitled to support from the WSIB. The WSIB doesn’t want to pay that support all the way to age 65 and retirement, so if it’s cheaper to put the worker back to school that’s what happens. It’s not altruistic. It’s the barest kind of pragmatism.
As a result of LMR, I end up working with a lot of clients who are going back to school. Women and men in their 30’s and 40’s and 50’s who have been injured on the job and now are retraining to do some other job. And more and more I see their experiences as simply another reflection of various problems that are at work in our education system.
To begin with, these students made no considered decision to return to school. When a worker is injured and can’t return to pre-accident employment that worker’s benefits depend on cooperation with the LMR process. So in order to avoid losing all income and ending up on welfare (a real danger – I’m not exaggerating) the worker may literally be forced back into school.
The worker does have some input into suitable fields of employment but not the final say. And there are times, especially where the worker was making a good pre-accident income that may be difficult to fully replace, where the WSIB does some pretty stupid things – like imagining that a career truck-driver in his 40’s can be successfully retrained as a laboratory technician, despite the fact that he never even passed high school science.
Your article is a very interesting read. I was injured on the job, and have gone through the LMR program at a private college.Cascade Disability Services originally wanted me to go to Everestt which used to be CDI (it went bankrupt and Everestt bought them out). The estimated course was over $14,000. I had to fight to go to Medix which was about $11,000 and a shorter course. I wanted to go to Seneca which had the same course and only cost about $3000 total. It was insisted I go to the private college because they did not want to wait until September for me to start the course.
Now my question is this, how common is it for Cascade Disability Services/WSIB to not pay for the course in full? I have completed and passed all the necessary courses and my Externship (placement). My Diploma is ready and waiting for me at the college. It cannot be released to me until they pay the remainder of the balance. To say I am not impressed is a gross understatement!
Sincerely,
Jen S.