Workplace Safety and Insurance Board staff rallied outside their own downtown Toronto offices Thursday, calling on their employer to address chronic staffing shortages and issues with a new “call centre model” — criticized by some for compromising service to vulnerable injured workers.The protest comes after numerous complaints by workers and their union about unmanageable workloads and internal “chaos,” according to documents previously obtained by the Star through a Freedom of Information request. Fred Hahn, Ontario president for the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents WSIB staff, said employees are under “enormous stress” as a result of staffing reductions and “repeated organizational change” at the board.“They are the backbone of this system” he said. “Without these workers, there would be no workers’ compensation system.”By noon Thursday, around 100 WSIB employees had gathered on their lunch break to rally outside the building — the first of 13 protests organized for the coming weeks at WSIB offices around Ontario.As previously reported by the Star, a 2018 poll conducted by the union found that 90 per cent of the 263 employees surveyed said work-related stress was impacting their personal lives and 92 per cent attributed workload issues to understaffing at the WSIB.In July, the board unrolled a new service delivery model that removed dedicated case managers from injured workers’ files. Under the new model, claimants now go into a general pool and are triaged based on the complexity of the case. “We recently empowered more of our staff to make decisions and work to their full professional capacity so that people who need our help get it faster. Now eligibility decisions are being made sooner, first payments delivered faster, and calls answered the first time,” said board spokesperson Christine Arnott in a statement.“We know these ...
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