Coquitlam man Giorgio Cima hasnât once been interviewed by , yet his claim for workers' compensation was rejected in a case his lawyer described as âoutrageous.â
Fort Nelson resident Bruce Erskine remains hobbled by a forklift accident more than eight years ago, but his WorkSafeBC claim remains unresolved.
These two cases have prompted the NDPâs WorkSafeBC critic, , to call for a review of the organization.
Simpson was reacting to two recent B.C. Supreme Court decisions that found the decisions by the â the independent body that hears appeals of WorkSafeBC rulingsâwere âpatently unreasonableâ in denying the claims made by Cima and Erskine.
âThe system is far too litigious,â Simpson said. âThis can go on for yearsâŠIf youâre dealing with corporation to corporation, thatâs one thingâŠbut when youâre talking about individuals and their families and theyâre worried about their income and families, itâs got to work a different way."
, who represented Cima pro bono, said he believes many people with genuine workplace injuries that merit compensation, simply throw their hands up and walk away because they canât afford to hire a lawyer or pay for medical experts to back their claim.
âIf they donât have a mental condition before they enter the system, they surely do shortly thereafter,â he said.
TOXIC WORKPLACE
Antibiotics were flowing into the vein in Giorgio Cimaâs right arm at a clinic in downtown Vancouver when his lawyer phoned to deliver some good news.
It was Wednesday, May 25, and the and set aside a decision by the Workersâ Compensation Appeal Tribunal that rejected his claim.
âFinally, someone believed in me,â Cima wrote in an email to Black Press about the decision. He said it brought tears to his eyes and some hope to his family.
His supervisor at Deltaâs Intact Distributors had been bullying him, Cima claims, specifically after an illness robbed him of his speech in 2012 and he began to communicate with e-mail and text messages. (Cima was previously diagnosed with the fatal neurological disease ALS, or Lou Gehrigâs Disease, but is now undergoing treatment for Lyme disease, whose symptoms mimic ALS.)
The situation came to a dramatic head on Christmas Day in 2013.
As he sat down for dinner with family and friends, he received a shocking text message from his boss, who called him a âretardâ and a âcrayon-eating motherf**ker.â
WorkSafeBC denied his claim for compensation, and when he appealed, the tribunal said in its ruling that the supervisor didnât intend to âintimidate, humiliate or degradeâ Cima.
He has been reflecting since the court set aside that ruling, and is hopeful heâll soon get better news about his claim.
âI was shocked to find that an organization that should be there for workers is in fact more for the employer,â wrote Cima, who has worked in Canada for more than 25 years. âThe fact that they didnât interview me or contact me to this date supports that.â
Anderson said he agreed to represent Cima because it was âone of the most outrageousâ cases heâd ever come across.
âIf his case didnât meet the standard for workplace bullying and harassment, there is no standard,â he said.
INJURY, FIGHT TAKE TOLL
On the same day Cima was sitting inside that downtown Vancouver clinic,
But Bruce Erskine, 63, didnât view his win as good news.
Back in 2008, he was run over by a forklift driven by his boss at Skinner Bros. Transport in Fort Nelson.
âI thought he cut me in half,â Erskine recalled of the forklift knocking him to the ground and its tire crushing his left foot as his leg was pulled under the counterweight.
WorkSafeBC denied his claim for compensation, he said, because a doctor chalked his injury up to soreness from pushing an ATV weeks earlier and not the forklift after an initial X-ray suggested his foot was merely strained.
But eight months later, Erskineâs foot still hadnât healed.
It wasnât until 2014, four specialists later, that a different type of X-ray revealed an injury that another doctor attributed to the forklift accident.
He appealed to the tribunal, but the body refused to admit the new medical evidence, saying Erskine was not credible.
In May, the court ordered the tribunal to take a second look, saying that line of reasoning was âpatently unreasonable.â
But the judge didnât bring him any closer to his goal of getting WorkSafeBC to review how its staff handled his case and revoke their credentials.
The words of a WorkSafeBC claim manager many years ago infuriate him to this day.
âHe told me on the phone, âIf we had to look after people like you, we would be bankrupt overnight,'â he said. âThey think they can walk over and step on people.â
WORKSAFEBC SAYS SYSTEM WORKS
Scott McCloy, spokesperson for WorkSafeBC, said he was unable to comment on the two cases, noting that both legal matters are ongoing.
WorkSafeBC and its staff âwork hard to get decisions right the first time,â he said, and both the appeal tribunal and B.C. Supreme Court are in place âto ensure justice can be done.â
McCloy denied that WorkSafeBC is an adversarial system, and said itâs actually an âinquiry-based system.â
He said sometimes facts are obvious, but in some cases âissues are highly complex. Often people try to make them simple, but theyâre not.â
