When Worksafe Fails?

If your right to be compensated for a work-place injury in challenged,
your first port of call is the Accident Compensation Conciliation Service (ACCS).
Although it’s been a toothless tiger for years, it is still a place where injured
workers can make some progress in claiming their rights. But now, the
toothless tiger may be stripped of its few remaining powers and reduced
to a mere talking shop.

Mr Hanks QC wants the have the ACCS’s powers reduced so that it’s a
mere talking shop and have Worksafe dictate most of what it does, which
if you speak to workcover victims, it already does !

This would see at least an extra 6000 claims being forced into the courts
for resolution. The VTHC estimates it will cost workers and employers at
least an extra $60 million a year.

This means $30 million each more than the current system.

It would be a lawyers’ picnic. It would blow-out the already ridiculos delays
in court resolutions becooming longer by at least two years and it would also
extend the suffering and make a further delay in medical treatment for
injured workers.

It would stop the treatment of injuries that should be treated and fixed quickly.

It would turn basic ordinary injuries into a battle ground that would prevent
workers from pursuing their claims and create a financial gift to lawyers.

For Injuries that could be fixed fast and the worker back to work quickly,
it would extend the process into a complex legal battle that would mean that
the injuries would become long-term and chronic.

This is an ill-considered and, in practice, a mad plan.

The VTHC says workers’ claims must be resolved quickly.

Unions want a one-stop shop that has the power to conciliate issues –
and – if that fails, arbitrate. The unions’ solution is speedy, simple, fair and
economically efficient.

It would deliver the best results for workers and employers.

WorkCover in Victoria is the most profitable system of workers compensation
in Australia. It makes a profit of more that $1 billion a year and pays more
than $700 million a year into state government coffers.

Since 2004 it’s cut employers premiums by 45% saving them $2 billion.

Despite WorkCover’s profits and its gifts to employers and sporting clubs etc,
it still fails to provide quality care for injured workers.

THE SYSTEM HAS FAILED - VICTORIAN WORKERS DESERVE BETTER
Authorised by B. Boyd for VTHC, 54 Victoria Street, Carlton South 3053