Whilst Safety counts injuries the workers compensation system multiplies them. This is the stark reality of what the worker’s compensation system in Australia does to people. The special investigation by Four Corners and the Fairfax Press found the system continues to be ‘immoral and unethical’ (https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/the-financial-scandal-and-human-cost-of/12496682)
The Investigation didn’t hold anything new for me. I have worked extensively in the compensation system and the purpose of the system is the health of the system not the health of workers. One of the great mythologies in the safety sector is the prioritization on systems. Safety doesn’t worry about how systems serve people it comes up with bizarre gobbledygook like ‘Resilience Engineering’ as if systems don’t contain people. Resilience cannot be ‘engineered’
In my time in the workers compensation system I set up a special return to work program called ‘WorkAssist’ in the Western suburbs of Sydney and all those on the program had been rejected by the system just like those documented in the Four Corners program. It seems to be a truism in Safety that when a brand is touted like iCare, that it means the opposite, a symbol that exacerbates the harm inflicted on those who are already on suicide watch.
One of the stark realities of the Four Corners Program was the centrality of numerics, the priority of targets and the dehumanization of persons as objects, sounds pretty consistent with Safety. The culture of the industry is one of counting, double speak and financial metrics, and strangely the more this is the focus the more expensive the system becomes.
When one explores the human side of harm and develops any empathy for persons or has a skerrick of ethics this industry can only be described as a ‘tragedy’. Of course the safety industry is yet to develop an Ethic of Risk or any work at all on the humanizing of persons. It is an indictment that here is nothing in the AIHS BoK on this critical issue. The AIHS BoK simply has no definition of personhood probably because this would stand in contradiction to the global mantra on zero and the criticality of counting targets. When your target is zero there can be no vision or leadership for the humanizing of persons.
The Program interviewed workers and executives in Regulatory positions and what follows is some of their statements:
“The decisions that I’ve seen in our investigations are not only unjust and unreasonable and wrong, some of them are downright immoral and unethical.”
“All these people have their snouts in the trough. It’s a disaster, unmitigated disaster.”
“You can just imagine how many people and organisations are circling around that pool of money and trying to make a buck out of it.”
None of this would surprise any practitioner on the ground. The system is designed to hide people as ‘clients’ and NOT get them back to work. Indeed, the system of workers compensation seems to actively harm people further. For example: In the WorkAssist Program I founded every person had already complex mental health conditions just by being dehumanized in the system. The toll of suicides related to the system is horrendous.
So, the calls will cry out to reform the system, yet another review. But the problem is not the system but the ideology/philosophy that underpins it. The problem is not the AIHS BoK but the ideology that underpins it. Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic is what happens when tokenistic behaviourist stuff is trotted out. A few people get sacked for bad behaviour, a review gets conducted and nothing changes. The deep-seated ideology of zero, objects, targets, numeric, metrics and dehumanizing remains and the vested interests with power continue as normal hiding behind the prioritization of systems over people. It seems once one leaves the safety system, health doesn’t matter.
Rob Lobg says
Howard, it’s not just compensation but the whole safety industry is designed to brutalise humans compensation and insurance is just the tip of the iceberg. When you ideology and discourse is zero then brutalism is the by product.
Claude Ramains says
Hardly heard a word about the Vic workcover system & it’s starring insurance company after the damning expose on Four Corners, The Age & SMH. It’s had 3 x Ombudsman’s investigations within 10 yrs & scathing reports that all reflect the article above. The insurance companies that deal with workcover Vic were also briefly but devastatingly exposed in the recent Financial Royal Commission But all that happened as a result was they changed their processes to be even sneakier than they already were. ( if that was even possible). So for all the talk about ICARE there’s been boo about the same system in Vic & I’m wondering why.
Is it because it would be yet another scandal to ad to the many under the current Vic governments watch?
One thing that they could do to improve the system is to mandate a psychological test pre employment to weed out the psychopaths before they start. Because the system is full of them. Meanwhile injured workers are not only dying but it’s soul destroying while the case managers, team leaders, CEOs etc get their bonus for “terminating” them.
It’s ghoulish!
bernardcorden says
idon’tCare:
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/department-warned-icare-had-direct-line-to-the-treasurer/ar-BB17SlHH?ocid=msedgntp
bernardcorden says
This is my truth, tell me yours – Aneurin Bevan
https://iview.abc.net.au/show/business
Rob Long says
James, my experiences with iCare have all been extremely negative and dehumanising. As long as Australians continue to be seduced by the neo-liberalism lie about wealth this will continue. Meanwhile the collatoral damage of people lives is despicable.
James Ellis says
the ombudsman was scathing, she was clearly distressed by what she uncovered. I have to say I’m not optimistic about our ability to sensemake collectively on this. I think that we will see polarisation and blaming now and another round of legislation designed to get the budget ‘back in black’.
Rob Long says
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
bernardcorden says
I found it most intriguing that many of the iCare claims managers were former employees with Wesfarmers whose primary objective is to provide a satisfactory return to shareholders.
https://www.wesfarmers.com.au/who-we-are/the-wesfarmers-way
Diane Smith-Gander AO is a non-executive director with Wesfarmers and the current chair of Safe Work Australia, which was established in 2008 to develop national policy relating to WHS and workers’ compensation.
https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/about-us/our-people
A previous executive role included a sinecure with Broadspectrum, which provided facilities management services at Manus Island Regional Migrant Processing Centre:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manus_Regional_Processing_Centre
The current chair of Safe Work Australia spent several years with McKinsey and Company in its Washington DC office:
https://powerbase.info/index.php/McKinsey_%26_Company
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/mckinsey-how-does-it-always-get-away-with-it-9113484.html
Another devout acolyte is the federal minister for disease:
https://www.greghunt.com.au/about-greg/biography/
Meanwhile in the moonlight state, a Brisbane law firm, which has Deputy Premier Jihad Jackie Trad’s trust as a stakeholder, received almost $5.4 million in state government fees for its involvement in worker compensation cases last financial year.
DWF Australia, which Ms Trad’s husband Damien van Brunschot also does legal work for, received $5,396,000 in legal fees in 2018-19 from WorkCover Queensland.
https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/law-firm-with-deputy-premier-as-stakeholder-earned-more-than-5m-in-government-fees-20190817-p52i31.html
There is no requirement to join any dots it is merely painting by numbers.
If you take a look at the values, which underpin the work of our peak safety body and substituted an antonym from a thesaurus for each term it would be much closer to the truth:
https://www.aihs.org.au/about
Indeed, the current chair of our peak safety body was recently appointed to the board of WHS Queensland:
https://www.aihs.org.au/news-and-publications/news/media-release-aihs-board-chair-naomi-kemp-appointed-board-whsq
Rob Long says
Quite true Howard, maybe due to limits of time but the system is designed that once someone goes on compo power is handed over to others, the employer becomes at best a spectator. Usually, language changes so that the person’s name is no longer used and they are demonised as the injured or client. Of course, this is the purpose of systems, to take away the person so that the system becomes more important than its parts. You won’t find Bateson anywhere in any safety curriculum or BoK but we need to consider much more our systems as ecologies not machines.
Howard Grace says
I was surprised that no-one was interviewed from the employers perspective. In fact the role of the employer was barely mentioned. There was no doubt that those workers injured had suffered frustration and disappointment due to icare and insurers attitudes and decisions. From my experience, employers also experience frustration and disappointment due to icare and insurers attitudes and decisions during efforts to expedite claims or question the validity of claims.