CSST: La CSN, FTQ and CSD voted for a reform that could bring significant setbacks

the FTQ, CSN and CSD have agreed, during the last months of June and July, a drastic reduction in compensation and a policy to make work the injured and sick of work as soon as possible. But an anonymous leak caused an outcry in other unions, prompting the CSST – including the Joint Board is composed equally of representatives of labor and management- to back down on his project. ERRATUM 7 NOVEMBER: The CSST has not declined and adopted the proposals.

In a decision CSST board taken 15 July 2011, and adopted unanimously, the Committee agreed to submit to the Minister of Labor, Lise Thériault, proposals resulting mainly Camiré December report 2010. These proposals would have the effect of reducing significantly the right to compensation for workers and injured workers, perverting the main purpose of the compensation scheme, compensation for occupational injuries and their consequences, to favor an objective of re-integration as quickly as possible in the labor market. The objective of change would aim to reduce the financial burden on employers for health and safety at work, that business is obviously far too heavy and he has long complained.

of the “gains” very thin prevention

These declines in the compensation should have been compensated, in the spirit of our great union strategists, by strengthening the powers of the unions at prevention. Some prevention procedures listed in the law would have been applied more widely, including small size enterprises. The adopted recommendations would have by cons had the effect of eliminating the only instance of prevention entirely in the hands of the workers to transfer powers to a joint committee. Furthermore, they have transferred to other currently preventing power in the hands of health authorities and social services, So the public sector, to the hands of companies. The preventive withdrawal would have ceased to be based on the precautionary principle, seeking to minimize the risks, in favor of a more approach “scientist” where the risk should have been shown before the preventive withdrawal. This change would have in case of doubts, in the absence of known risk, preventive withdrawal would have been severely limited, even abolished, which would have had effects including the right to preventive withdrawal of pregnant workers. These changes CSST wanted to bring the regime of prevention show that despite the claim of union representatives to have made gains on prevention, these are rather thin and subject to interpretation, while declines were significant for compensation.

Major setbacks for compensation

While currently it is the doctor, selected by rough, which controls the process of returning to work, CSST would loosen its control and insert the injured workers to work as soon as possible. L’UTTAM, an organization defending the rights of injured workers, says about:
“The CSST wishes to introduce new provisions in the law that would allow it to require a worker, during the medical consolidation phase, to participate in professional or rehabilitations measures, during the rehabilitation phase, to kind of medical measures that escape the control doctor treating. We think of the implementation of a return to work plan, coaching in the workplace by specialists, interdisciplinary evaluation and intervention.”

These measures would have been accompanied by a reduction in the rehabilitation care covered by the CSST, with the goal of returning to work rather than healing the injured person. An accident victim experiencing significant pain due to a work accident n”would therefore no longer have been insured for treatment which would relieve pain but would not improve his working capacity. Furthermore, these cuts would have had the effect of establishing identical lump sums for a given lesion, which means that care would no longer be covered after having exceeded these amounts, even if the medical situation of the victim required it.

The drugs covered by the CSST would also have been affected by this reform, by reducing victims' access to medicines. Temporary assignment measures (return accident victims to work in different positions rather than removing them completely) would have been encouraged, which would have opened the door to many abuses, in particular on the determination by the employer of the heaviness of a task, or on the assignment of punitive tasks by the employer to accident victims. The proposed reform would also have had the effect of forcing accident victims whose employer refuses to reinstate them following a work accident to look for work elsewhere. As reintegration into employment is considered a right for the worker and an obligation for the employer, this measure would have punished the victims for an illegal act committed by the bosses !

For more details on this reform: UTTAM