The NSW State Government wants to fix the way we handle workplace psychological injury. The system isn’t working, and they are right to want to fix it.
It costs too much, offers too little, and is a maze of forms and bureaucracy. But the way they are going about it will hurt working people today and into the future.
More people are suffering psychological injury at work, and more are rightly claiming workers compensation.
The Government’s concern is that if these trends continue the scheme will collapse and no one will be left protected.
I don’t know whether the economics of the scheme are as dire as the Government makes out. They have not made that case in a convincing way.
What I do know is that there is not enough of a focus on preventing psychological injury at work in the first place. There isn’t enough of an emphasis on getting people back to work in a way that recognises and responds to a worker’s pain and anguish. And there are too many private actors in the scheme who are more interested in extracting value and less interested in helping injured workers.
Instead, the Government wants to make it harder to make a workers comp claim for psychological injury. The government proposal would require workers complete performance management or engage in a lengthy adjudication process in an already-overburdened industrial commission before making a claim. Worse still is the proposal to double how injured a person needs to be before accessing long-term entitlements for psychological injury.
The workers comp scheme is there as a safety net for people injured at work. Injured workers need our support, not roadblocks and red tape. Yes, the scheme needs fixing, but making it harder for people to access it is not the solution.
The NSW Government has done a number of things that improve the working lives of our members and they should be commended for that, but this is not one of them. I oppose their changes to workers comp and I think you should too.
-Daniel Papps
Acting General Secretary
United Services Union
