Welcome to the Compensation Café!

Written by: Janet Patterson, WELLS Director

This blog series is meant to cover all things related to Workers’ Compensation. It is managed by one of our WELLS Directors, Janet Patterson. 

Welcome to the “Compensation Café”. We have all had good conversations in cafés and lunchrooms & bars & coffee shops. My hope is that this virtual “Compensation Café” will provide space for good conversations about compensation issues for injured workers.

The schedule is ambitious – a new blog each week for a year. Half of the blogs will be mine and half will be written by guests. This is a small commitment compared to the one required by us all to ensure that workplaces are actually safe,  and that “ injured at work” becomes a thing of the past. 

As you may know, I had the great privilege of conducting a  province-wide targeted review of the workers’ compensation system in British Columbia in 2019, together with Jim Parker, Donna Hanson and Doreen Russell. In the course of this Review, I heard from hundreds of injured workers, family members, advocates and compensation stakeholders. There were many more voices and issues than could be included in the report New Directions: WCB Review 2019 (posted under Featured Research & Publications).

I must say that the accounts presented by injured workers and their families changed me. Each presentation was made in person, in a public forum, often attended at some personal cost. As these individuals shared their deeply personal journeys, solely for the purpose of contributing to a better compensation system, they collectively illuminated some truths. In this virtual café, I will present conversations that I would have liked to have had, or did have, or should have had about these and other compensation matters. 

Originally published September 7, 2021