“They Have All Been Faithful Workers”: Injured Workers, Truth, and Workers’ Compensation in Ontario, 1970-2008
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abstract
In interviews with injured workers with serious and/or complex injuries, a clear belief emerged that for them to be successful in their compensation claims they had to persuade a regular array of decision-makers that their injuries resulted from accidents that occurred “in and or out of the course of employment,” that they feel the way they say they are feeling, that they can and cannot do what they say they can and cannot do, and that they are capable of learning what they say they are capable of learning. They must, in short, convince these decision-makers (family doctors, employers, Workers Compensation Board [WCB] doctors, and medical specialists, as well as WCB adjudicators) that their story is the truth. The author’s presence as a researcher added another layer to the discursive process, in that the author, too, became someone injured workers had to inform, and, if necessary, convince about their truths. It was in this sense that the authority for the author’s research into the struggles of injured workers became, in Michael Frisch’s terms, a “shared authority.” The author’s written words about their stories and their struggles were to be used to help the decision-makers, the researchers, and the wider public understand that faithful workers were truthful workers.
