Another ACC Myth
If there was every a perfect illustration of how the left think all employers are evil it is this statement from Council of Trade Unions president, Helen Kelly.
““Rewarding employers for a lower claims rate doesn’t reduce accidents but provides incentives for accidents to be covered up.”
“Employers could fail to report accidents, misrepresent them as not being workplace related, or bully employees into not seeking treatment, she said.”
What a load of tosh. “No claims bonuses” for accident-free workplaces has been shown to definitively reduce accident rates as employers are incentivised to promote workplace safety and fix dangerous working practices and situations. This is the situation in South African mines (where I have worked) and the financial incentive is more than enough to make SA mines among the safest in the world. This is in stark contrast to New Zealand where health and safety issues hardly raise interest above the level of ensuring the paperwork for accreditation is up to date.
Employers have no power to cover up accidents.
”In addition, such an incentive inclines employers to try to get their employees back to work as soon as possible – this has been shown to promote recovery and healing, if done properly (and forcing employees into inappropriate work too early is guaranteed to increase and employer’s costs, when relapse occurs)
Employers have no power to cover up accidents. The reporting of an accident is done by the patient’s initial care-giver (usually the doctor or ambulance officer). There are plenty of legal safeguards already in place to prevent an unscrupulous employer pressurizing an employee not to seek medical attention. Frankly, those employers unpleasant enough to try this are already doing so, purely because they do not want to pay sick leave or have a man off. However, the vast majority of employers realise that an injured workforce is extremely counter-productive and will eventually lead to much worse accidents. Employers stupid enough not to realise this are driven out of business as they cannot compete with a business with a healthy workforce.
Insurance companies deal to those employees who try to dispute work related claims. A cursory glance over decisions made by ACC, as to whether accidents are work related or not, reveals a marked slant towards the account of the employee and a very liberal interpretation of “work-related”. As ACC will remain the principle insurer of non-work related injuries, you can rest assured that they will be keen to see work injuries classified as such.
This is just more of the “employers are evil” nonsense from the unions again. That David Parker mouths the same silly assertions, simply means that Labour have similar delusions.
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Jul 15 10 12:22 am
If we are going to go back to experience rating, the way ACC was run when Bill Birch was ACC minister, there may well be an increase in the numbers of employers who challenge their employees’ claims at review to avoid increased experience rating. ACC may well be keen to see employees work claims as work related, but employers may not be so keen in some cases.
What this could mean is that if ACC decides that ongoing injuries are not part of a work related claim and cuts a claimant off, and the claimant reviews that decision, the employer will side with ACC. If the claimant wins, then the employer will go to review on the experience rating to see if they can revisit the decision. If the claimant loses, the employer will not only have ongoing attribution to that particular claim, they will also contest the length of the attribution that will lead to the experience rating on that particular claim. It happened a lot in the 1980s.
Jul 15 10 1:17 am
The current set of regulations and laws in place for employees more than covers this. The Employment act makes it very difficult for an employer to abuse an employee in this fashion. And ACC are very keen to see an accident classified as work-related. The scenario you are postulating is highly unlikely.
Jul 15 10 10:53 am
the current laws may well prevent employers abusing employees, but they don’t prevent ACC abusing claimants, with employers onside. OTOH, if ACC thinks a claim is a work injury, but the employer doesn’t, and succeeds in this challenge, the only two options are to cut the claimant off ACC, or to treat as a non work accident.
Jul 15 10 1:11 am
While we’re on the subject, what’s with giving university students grades? That just encourages cheating!
Also, we should look at the terrible incentives provided by punishing criminals – I hear that the negative incentive of prison makes some of them lie.
scrubone´s last [type] ..It’s over- for now
Jul 15 10 1:21 am
Yes, and what’s with employee bonuses? That just encourages employees to pretend that they are working harder when they are not…
Jul 15 10 10:06 am
His ETS aside, I’m starting to appreciate Smith. He’s got a lemon, so he did the natural thing and squeezed it.. now he seems to be rehydrating it with sugar water in the form of incentives.
Somebody should give him Kiwirail..
JC
Jul 15 10 1:23 pm
A case of projection going on here. It’s the unions that are the bullys. They are the evil that comes about when you get power without responsibility.
Jul 18 10 1:52 pm
Why do we still have an ACC? Why should employers (who are after all spending their own money) be levied to pay for lazy or careless workers who can’t be bothered to look after themselves or have their own insurance?
It would be legislatively very simple indeed to repeal the whole mess, ending all the crap about levies, payments, etc – just keep the clause preventing workers etc from suing their employers to recover the costs of their own stupidity and negligence.