Email from another Injured Workers Family who's complaints have been ignored by the VWA
Complaints Handling Project VWA Complaints PolicyPosted by an Anonymous Reader.
Hi, I have to agree with you whole heartedly!
Everything on their paperwork is made to look good, it has NO SUBSTANCE!
I have asked this question to workcover complaints many times! Who is accountable when this is not followed? I still do not know!
Just when I think I cannot learn anymore illogical rubbish about workcover up pops a new demented experience!
I deal with them on behalf of my partner who was injured at work.We have fought with them for most of the time for retraining in non physical work equal to the payment he was able to earn pre-injury. Which VWA assures is his entitlement.
In order to do this you must be on a partial work certificate which enables them to delay all training until you are cut off payment.
Interestingly, their IME'S and a LOT can be said about those! Will NOT send him back to his previous job but just love to throw in here say that maligns the injury.
There is nothing fair just or humane about workcover! Their paper is notworth the cost of ink for printing.
Instead of retraining, this moronic vocational assistant sends him mailings of so called appropriate very physical bottom feeder jobs he cannot do and therefore sends his already depressed levels and low self esteem plummeting to new lows!
What gets to me is EVERYONE who works in this system realises how disgusting it is. Yet no one changes anything!
I am sick of hearing yes just send a letter to your state member of parliament. I have sent letters until I am blue in the face. (please try a MY WILL letter)
This is why, I believe that we ALL need to get together. BE SEEN BE HEARD.
Get in numbers and get things changed!
They do not even warn us of the truth before we are applying for claims!
They do not tell us even if we ever can work again that no one will employ us!
Who can understand the accident compensation act with all the back and forwards revisions?
Is that even close to ok?
The interesting use of the percentage of injury scale! How wonderful it is to manipulate reality! How convenient!
The no work capacity with a likelihood to continue clause. Likelihood to continue? Oh sorry you are too young the medical panel will not pass you on that. Too bad u cannot do physical work and earn a decent living. Oh and the wonderful, you cannot appeal the medical panels decision. Oh, they are not biased! Well who pays them? When does it end?
Never, if no one puts a stop to it.
Class action? QC's helping the cause?
How is it that the majority of Australians have been brainwashed into thinking all of this is merely put in place because of a couple of scammers on the system?Were they even scammers? After this experience I really have to question the manipulation of evidence in any of those cases.
Surely if it was about the actual injured employee's then the Government agencies wouldn't be profiting!
Wake up Australia... it so easily could happen to you!
WCV's response:
This shows another injured workers families struggle to survive in a system like workcover which has been designed to beat you inside out!
Dear Reader:
You have hit the nail right on the head here with your statement of who pays the medical panels, the doctors, the advisory service etc.... yep its the government!
I also believe that if your agency/department is being funded by the federal or state government then your policies and procedures are not impartial or fair to any injured worker in Victoria!
Worksafe uses procedures and policies derived from Parliament which is government funded.
The VWA advisory service is funded by the government.
The workplace ombudsman's office is funded by the government.
The medical specialist we are made to see are paid for by the goverment.
Mr Holdings office is funded by the government.
So with all of your options covered by government funding how can worksafe and its processes be impartial?
Even to a layman you can see that this system is not protecting the workers nor is it showing any form of impartiality in its claim handling.
This work injury insurance system is a big scam when it is leaving its victims physically and financially ruined.
All injured workers should be entitled to no fault workplace insurance.
All injured workers should be entitled to common law recourse.
All services that are required as part of the claims management processes should be outsourced to unrelated companies whom can make a truthful and impartial decisions on payments, not be left to government funded worksafe and their paid providers.
We all know that doctors working for worksafe will provide unfavorable reports on the claimants. We also know that they are paid exuberant amounts of money by worksafe to see us and then that exuberant amount of money also seems to give them the right to treat you like dirt and to pre judge you and your injury!
Don't bother complaining to worksafe about the doctors behavior during your assessment because worksafe will either completely ignore it or just tell you its not up to them even though they (worksafe) are paying these rude and arrogant doctors a fortune for a report based on prefabricated evidence supplied by worksafe and in many instances unsubstantiated accusations and a guilt before innocent verdict on your personality, your nature, your way of life or just your look!
This is not fair and reasonable treatment of injured workers who are already being screwed by an unfair and government coffer based system.
Worksafe show huge profits each year and yet we seem to be entitled to less and less.
Mr Holdings office has told us here at WCV's that the reason injured workers from the Kennett era are not entitled to common Law compensation is because the government cannot afford to include us in the changes already made.
Injured workers are sick and tired of being ripped off by a government who is clearly discriminating against injured workers of the Kennett era.
WCV's is calling for injured workers to register their interest in forming a group to take legal action in this issue.
Please forward your interest to: workcovervictims@westnet.com.au
There is greatness in doing something you hate for the sake of someone you love.—Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
FYI ...
8 years ago
2 comments:
Here is an extract of a workcover case against a injured worker.
They forced him on in an unfair trial, forced to sell his family home and at the end of the day he at least got some justice.
Workcover south australia should be ashamed of themselves the way they bully injured workers.
99. In considering this argument, I have read the affidavit of the appellant sworn on 6 May 2008. It is clear that Mr Di Fazio made decisions in relation to the conduct of the appellant’s trial and the recall of witnesses against the specific background of the appellant’s want of means and ability to fund a new trial. The trial to that point had been a costly exercise for the appellant, well beyond his reasonable means. The fact that this is so seems to be an unfortunate consequence of the fact that this trial on any view of the matter was poorly managed from the outset. As far as the appellant’s interests are concerned the only tangible result of the delay between January 2006 and April 2007, seems to have been that the funds he acquired from the sale of his home to pay for his representation were whittled away.
100. Mr Di Fazio did what he could to redress some of the obvious deficiencies in the conduct of the trial to that date by requesting the recall of nine witnesses. However, I am not able to conclude that his intervention at that point in the trial, against the background of what took place, did in fact effectively cure the prejudice suffered by the appellant as a result of the lack of representation at an earlier stage of the trial.
101. On the hearing of this appeal much attention was focussed on the minutiae of the many and varied complaints of the appellant. Some of the more serious complaints are:
* the failure by the magistrate to grant adjournment applications made between 17 March 2005 up to and including 3 January 2006;
* the failure to produce documents relevant to the cross examination of a number of prosecution witnesses including Faggoter, Daniel, Hazell, N and L Pope, Briscoe, Gadd, Denson and Wong;
* the refusal of the magistrate to give leave to the appellant to issue subpoenas for the production of documents and for the calling of witnesses; and
* the failure, in all of the circumstances of the magistrate to give the appellant sufficient time in order to prepare for cross examination, especially in relation to the expert witnesses.
102. In addition, the appellant complained that at the time, he was unaware of his right to challenge the expert opinion expressed by Dr Lunn, and that he was required to cross examine other experts such as Dr Acott at times when he was suffering from headaches and was not in a fit state to concentrate. The appellant also says that he was unaware that he was able to cross examine his own psychiatrist Dr Griffin on the totality of his appointments with him. It was not just confined as he thought during the cross examination, to the attendances out of which charges had arisen.
103. One example the appellant proffered in relation to the effect of the failure of the respondent to give timely discovery, is contained in the affidavit of Mr Cronshaw dated 7 February 2008. In that affidavit the appellant’s solicitor attests to his attempts to communicate with the Adelaide Magistrates Court during the period of adjournment between 11 December 2006 and 10 January 2007 about the provision of documents which had been obtained as a result of subpoenas issued earlier that year. That affidavit attests to the receipt of a number of documents supplied well after the prosecution closed its case in January 2006 but before the resumption of the trial in April 2007. The affidavit is replete with examples of documents which, had they been supplied prior to the commencement of the trial in October 2005, would have been of assistance in cross examination of a number of witnesses including Dr Lunn, Dr Wong, Dr Acott and Dr Williamson.
104. The respondent, on the other hand, argued that although documents relevant to some witnesses were not produced, and some of the witnesses were not called, in the end the magistrate did not rely upon the evidence of those witnesses, or specifically stated that he disbelieved them. The respondent also argued that some of the witnesses were actually helpful to the appellant. Whilst many of the respondent’s submissions are factually correct, in the end I cannot overlook the fact that the evidence in the main, on which the magistrate relied to satisfy himself beyond reasonable doubt of the proof of the appellant’s guilt, unfolded during the period of time when the appellant was unrepresented.
105. Moreover, the magistrate considered the state of the evidence at that time and ruled that there was a case to answer. The fact that he was later prepared to hear further submissions on the topic of the case to answer cannot change the fact that he had already made up his mind on that particular topic some 12 months earlier.
106. The same point can be made with regard to some of the other matters which were agitated by Mr Di Fazio towards the end of the trial. For example, the argument as to the validity of the complaint which had first surfaced much earlier, was put to the magistrate in April 2007 after he had commented much earlier that he had impliedly already accepted the validity of the complaint.
107. In Dietrich v The Queen (1992) 177 CLR 292, the High Court considered whether the conviction of a man who was unrepresented during his trial should be set aside by virtue of the trial judge’s failure to adjourn, postpone or stay the trial until legal representation was available.
108. In Dietrich’s case, Gaudron J commented that at least insofar as serious offences are concerned, legal representation where it is desired is essential for a fair trial.
109. At page 370 she stated:
There are two features of the criminal trial that strongly challenge the assumption that a trial may be fair notwithstanding that the accused, contrary to his wishes, is not represented. The first is the adversarial nature of the proceedings. The second is the nature of the forensic contest involved...
Decisions as to the evidence to be called and as to the course of cross-examination determine the factual account on which the jury must reach its verdict. And it must be expected that that evidentiary account will, on occasions, differ from the underlying facts (66). Further, as Certoma (67) points out, the factual account that emerges does so as a product of collaboration between the parties, whether overt or otherwise. Thus, in any given case, the way in which the case is conducted may affect its outcome. And, of course, that means that the knowledge and forensic skills which legal representation would bring to bear might also affect its outcome.
110. In summary I do not consider that given the constraints within which Mr Di Fazio was required to represent the appellant, the prejudice the appellant had suffered as a result of the entire Crown case unfolding during a period when he was unrepresented, was cured. The unfortunate concatenation of circumstances which occurred in the course of this trial combined to cause irreparable prejudice to the appellant. Those circumstances included:
* the fact that notwithstanding ten applications for an adjournment to enable the appellant to obtain the necessary cash funds from the sale of his house, the magistrate refused to postpone or adjourn the trial;
* at the close of the prosecution case, after finding a case to answer and requiring the appellant to elect, the magistrate thereafter was prepared to adjourn the trial repeatedly for a period of 15 months during which various counsel came and went without progressing the matter;
* the fact that during that 15 months the appellant’s financial means were depleted;
* the fact that during the period of that adjournment the magistrate made a number of comments as to the strength of the prosecution case and the insidious unfairness, as he saw it, to the appellant of the proceedings to date. These comments may well have influenced the decisions made by Mr Di Fazio in April 2007; and
* the failure of the magistrate to rule on the appellant’s challenges to the evidence in a timely way, in particular his challenges to the authorisations under s 110 of the Act. This might have prejudiced the ability of the appellant to effectively challenge that evidence at all.
111. There were a number of other additional points made by the appellant during the course of argument however, I have highlighted only the matters which I consider to have been substantially causative of a miscarriage of justice. For these reasons I would allow the appeal on this ground.
Hi done over, Thank you for your comment.
I would have to agree.. I wonder if he ever got his house back!
His life back before the injury!
Money does not give us back what we already should have received.
Why should we have to fight for our basic human rights... rights we are led to believe we have when we work.. we are led to believe we are protected!
WELL I FOR ONE KNOW THIS IS A COMPLETE FARSE!
A small win after fighting hard and all the unpleasantries associated with courts is not my idea of justice!
All of the lies W.C put the innocent through and their financial stoppers on the end of the possible find in the I.W favour!
People should matter more than corporations!
What you said about unfair trials is also true.
Injuries in their eyes = SCRAPHEAP!
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