When I was a line cook, my supervisor made me pour 20L of boiling broth over my forearm. In that kitchen, he was known for two things: being reckless, and abusing me. Nobody there doubted that the incident was his fault, so I easily gathered the evidence I needed to sue him: CCTV footage, a coworker’s witness statement, and even a hasty mea culpa straight from the horse’s mouth.
I took this to the Workers Compensation Board, who said they couldn’t do anything. Via their “no fault” policy, WCB is only concerned with the direct effects of the injury itself, not with “assigning blame”. Then I called a lawyer, and found out that WCB actually had legal authority over my entire case, so I couldn’t sue my supervisor through private channels either. Finally, after some frantic research, I discovered I’d been powerless since the very beginning.
Workers’ Compensation has always served one purpose: to make it easier for bosses to exploit their workers. It was legislated in 1914—a period of industrial growth in Canada—to prevent the rise in workplace injuries from turning into a rise in expensive lawsuits. Employers pay a monthly premium to the program, which automatically bars injured workers from any legal process, compensates them for (often insufficient) treatment cost and wage losses, and expedites them back to work. It’s the perfect arrangement for Canadian capitalism—unconditional liability insurance for them, and a historical scam for us.
My own compensation covered merely two weeks of treatment and pay. Then, I was ushered right back to work—where my supervisor remained. Accepting that check felt like utter degradation, but I had no other choice. Workers haven’t had a choice for at least a century—under this system, we never will.
– Anonymous
