52,000 injured workers in NSW have been underpaid up to $80 million in compensation for loss of wages.
Following revelations on the ABC’s Four Corners program the United Services Union has joined Unions NSW and opposition political partiesto hold the government and iCare to account.
At the same time as tens of thousands of workers have been ripped off, iCare senior executives are among the highest paid in the public sector.
Prior to iCare being created, there were two people who had an average salary of $300,000. There are now 45 people with an average salary of $300,000 and the top seven executives earn an average of around $660,000. A confidential NSW Treasury briefing says “icare’s executive team is likely the highest paid in the NSW government sector”.
In 2015, Liberal Treasurer Dominic Perrottet created iCare – the agency responsible for NSW’s workers’ compensation scheme. iCare’s executive inherited a $4 billion surplus, which has disappeared in just 4 years, at the same time they are cutting off compensation for injured workers.
iCare provides workers compensation insurance to more than 326,000 businesses and insures 3.6 million employees and it answers to Dominic Perrottet.
“If you get injured at work you deserve to be treated with dignity and respect and receive fair compensation which helps you manage your injury and get back to work,” USU General Secretary Graeme Kelly OAM said.
“Instead workers are being denied adequate compensation and being forced back to work when they are still injured – they are basically given no choice if they want to feed their family.
“This is a disgraceful betrayal of trust.”
