TORONTO, June 01, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- With just days to go before the provincial election, injured workers and their supporters are marching on Queen’s Park, to put all Parties on notice that the era of austerity and cuts at the Workplace Safety & Insurance Board (WSIB) is over. At 11am today, a vibrant and colourful crowd with visible and invisible disabilities will rally at the Legislature and march to the Ministry of Labour, in one of the last major mobilizations before election day.
The WSIB was created in order to help people who have been injured or made ill on the job. But the past several years have seen the institution line its own bank account, at the expense of injured workers. Since 2010, the WSIB has doubled its assets, with over $35 billion in the bank – more than Rogers Communications, one of the largest corporations in the country. In the same time period, compensation benefits paid out to injured workers have been cut in half.
“Between the province-wide Workers Comp Is A Right campaign and the Real Healthcare campaign, injured workers and their allies are united in calling for changes to the province’s worker’s compensation system,” said ONIWG President Willy Noiles. “We’ve never been better prepared to make our votes count on June 7.”
The rally & march marks the 35th straight year that injured workers and supporters have descended on Queen’s Park on June 1st. In 1983, over 3,000 people showed up to protest regressive changes to the system. In 2018, injured workers are still here, and still demanding transformative change.
After the rally, the crowd will gather at the Ontario College of Art & Design for a town hall meeting to which the four major Parties have been invited.
“The town hall meeting will give us a chance to hear from the Parties directly on how they plan to address our Workers’ Comp Is A Right demands,” said Noiles. “It would have been nice if all the Parties showed up, but their lack of response tells us all we need to know about their commitment to injured workers.”
For more information, please contact:
Willy Noiles: 289-219-4473