WorkSafeBC sees rise in job-related claims

Health, education, agriculture workers hit hardest by employment-related exposure

WorkSafeBC approved more than 2,000 claims for work-related COVID-19 exposures by June 11 — almost 300 more than were approved in all of 2020.

Claims increased in virtually every industry, with the exception of health care — particularly acute and long-term care, where claims “have been declining for several months,” Samantha Pinto, media relations officer at WorkSafeBC, wrote in an email. Residents and staff of long-term care facilities were among the first to receive vaccinations.

Overall, however, the increase in claims “appears to reflect higher transmission of COVID-19 in B.C. (prior to introduction of the circuit breaker),” Pinto wrote. She noted that in June the government agency started seeing “a significant reduction” in the number of claims filed, “likely a result of the vaccination rollout.”

Claims from teachers and others working in education were second only to health care, with nearly 300 claims registered as of June 11. Nearly 70 per cent of those came from elementary and kindergarten teachers and assistants

Teri Mooring, president of the B.C. Teachers' Federation, said she was “surprised” to see such a high percentage of claims from elementary school teachers. “We might have expected secondary school teachers to be more impacted,” she said, noting older students transmit the virus much like adults.

Mooring suggested the province's lax mask-wearing guidelines and testing strategy may have been contributing factors.

The teachers' union had been calling for a mask mandate since last September. The province didn't require masks until February, however, and even then only for middle and secondary schools.

“We know that it's more difficult to physically distance with younger children,” she said, “and there was no mask mandate for so long.”

Education isn't the only sector that saw claims jump. Agriculture workers have been among the hardest hit this year. So far in 2021, WorkSafeBC has approved COVID-19 claims for agriculture workers at nearly twice the rate of health-care workers. There were 6.3 claims approved for every thousand agriculture workers so far this year, compared to 3.3 per thousand health-care workers.

Natalie Drolet, Executive Director of the Migrant Workers Centre, thinks claims among agriculture workers is probably an undercount.

“It's probably much higher than this, especially the temporary foreign workers,” she said, for whom filing a claim creates the risk of “losing their jobs or not being able to return the following season.”

Most workers don't want to rock the boat with their employers, Drolet said. “They don't want to be blacklisted from the seasonal agricultural worker program.”

She said her organization hears “a lot of concerns from workers about the lack of health and safety protocols on farms,” from not receiving personal protective equipment, to physical distancing requirements not being adhered to.

So far this year, B.C. workers submitted 2,805 claims to WorkSafeBC for workplace exposure to COVID-19. As of June 11, the agency had approved 2,027 claims — about 72 per cent.

To date, WorkSafeBC has approved 74.5 per cent of all registered COVID-19 claims.

According to the agency's website, claims are typically rejected if a positive COVID-19 test can't be confirmed or if someone leaves work “strictly as a preventative measure.”