Year: 2019

In 2017, an injured worker complained to the Commission about the WSIB’s inconsistent responses on how temporary total (TT) disability benefits are calculated for the recurrence of an injury.

We determined that some WSIB staff were misapplying a policy for payment of TT disability benefits; specifically, they were using a worker’s pre-injury earnings to calculate benefits for a recurrence of an injury if the recurrence took place while the worker was unemployed, rather than using most recent earnings in the calculation, as required by policy. (For more on the 2017 complaint and resolution, see page 16 of our 2017 Annual Report.)

Upon follow-up by the Commission and after the WSIB clarified the policy, it agreed to identify claims where the policy may have been misapplied. In June 2019, the WSIB completed its review of 327 claims that may have been affected by the misapplication of the policy. This resulted in an additional $650,000 in total benefits paid to the affected workers. For claims where the WSIB did not have more recent earnings information, the WSIB sent a letter to the worker that explained the issue and invited the worker to provide more recent earnings information, if available.