"He was Threatened and Told to Cooperate": Immigrant Worker Experiences with the Workers' Compensation System in the Canadian Context.

Abstract

Purpose: To understand immigrant workers' experiences when navigating the workers' compensation system for access to benefits following a work injury or illness.

Methods: Interviews were conducted with 17 injured immigrant workers recruited in British Columbia through partnerships with settlement organizations, social media and professional networks. A situational analysis approach was used to analyze interview data and to identify contextual reasons for immigrant workers' experience with the workers' compensation system.

Findings: The findings describe a tension between how the workers' compensation system is intended to work and how injured immigrant workers experienced the system. Workers described challenges with accessing and communicating with their case managers for timely access to benefits, work accommodation that did not align with their needs and disrupted their rehabilitation, and complicated claim trajectories stemming from perceptions of procedural unfairness. Immigrant workers described how these experiences were perpetuated by their different contexts including language barriers, unfamiliarity with the workers' compensation system, and their identity as immigrant workers.

Conclusion: This study identifies contextual factors for the experiences of immigrant workers, within the Canadian context, for consideration by workers' compensation system in the management of injury and illness to reduce inequities where they may exist.