Joey Thompson, The Province

Published: Wednesday, April 02, 2008

He sat opposite the pressed suits around the adjudicator's table; fidgety in torn, soiled, thrift-store giveaways, patchy bristles on his sallow chin giving off a steady whiff of booze and butts.

Andrew Finlayson wasn't always like that, although WorkSafe BC would have you think so.

No, there was a time when Finlayson's enthusiasm, energy and attention to detail elevated him up the ranks to fork-lift driver and supervisor at his work site, a bio-recovery plant in North Vancouver.

But that was before he submitted to WorkSafe's routine annual hearing test administered at a mobile audio booth positioned on site.

As I detailed in this space two years ago, the botched hearing test in 2001 triggered a swift and merciless decline of the now-54-year-old loner -- the tester accidentally cranked the audio equipment to full volume, discharging a high-pitched piercing whine into Finlayson's ears that still rings today.

His hearing is fried. A shrill, siren sound accompanies him 24/7, shattering the silence, rending to shreds all thought: tinnitus, a permanent bilateral hearing loss, and hyperacusis, a sensitivity to light and sound so painful his meetings with the vocational consultant had to take place in near-darkness.

That said, they could have been held on the moon for all the good they did: If the painful hearing and sound disability didn't drive him off the deep end, years of WorkSafe's stubborn, willfully blind, callous insistence that he didn't have a permanent disability and wasn't entitled to wage loss and rehab sure did.

Only after countless appeals, reviews and blistering scoldings by David Bradshaw, Local 1, Marine Workers & Boilermakers Union, did WorkSafe finally come through -- Finlayson got a month's wages and a few dollars pension for what they insisted was a little loss of function.

He was then advised to return to his pre-injury job. Request for vocational rehab assistance denied.

The arbiter, like many others, had completely ignored the medical reports that made it clear Finlayson was in no shape to return to his old job and likely never would be.

But WorkSafe's officers weren't about to let the facts get in the way -- even when provided by some of the country's top neurootologists.

The verdict of the medical experts: People with tinnitus and hyperacusis are "majorly handicapped" and usually unable "to return to any form of satisfactory employment."

With Bradshaw's help, Finlayson's brother Ian and sister-in-law Claire, award-winning goldsmiths in Gibsons, hounded the injured workers insurance company every step of the way. But as time dragged on and no help was forthcoming, they had to watch as the once-earnest worker stumbled to his knees; isolated, tormented, scrawny and boozing.

"[He] has deteriorated to the point where he advises his family he is contemplating suicide on a regular basis," Bradshaw wrote the disability claims adjudicator last May.

But by then the board's attitude was ho, hum -- he never would have amounted to much anyway and besides, he had always drank.

It wasn't until Finlayson's file ended up on a review division officer's desk that his fate began to change.

Robert Bal's 14-page decision last month cited major flaws in the previous work of the board disability claims adjudicator, case manager, disability awards officer and vocational rehab consultants.

Bal agreed Finlayson's "profound disability" made it unlikely he could ever work again. He awarded him total loss of earnings back to 2002.

But the damage was already done.

© The Vancouver Province 2008

How many times do you hear stories like this. How many long outstanding claims such as this one is out there. It would be fair to suggest that there are thousands of claims like this where an Adjudicator, Case Manager, DRB  or Appeals Commissioner has received bonuses for denying claims. Why are Governments ignoring the plights of injured and disabled workers? No doubt politicians who have the power to make a change are receiving finanancial incentives to turn a blind eye. 

Gerry Miller