Damaged Fingers: Minimized Employee Accident Report Forms Lead to $600,000 in Fines and Penalties

The Canadian salt mining company had a stellar employee safety record. In the latter ’90s, the U.S.-based Salt Institute lauded the firm for having the lowest injury rate among salt producers in North America. But the safety record wasn’t worth its salt – investigators found that the company had intentionally downplayed a number of serious injuries, which resulted in the company receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in government rebate money.

A sharp-eyed claims adjudicator in the Windsor, Ontario, office of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) first found the irregularity that led to our investigation. While reviewing an employee’s accident report filed by the salt mining company, the adjudicator found the worker had “damaged two fingers on his left hand” but hadn’t recorded any lost time from work. However, a Windsor hospital had sent the WSIB office a bill for treatment that indicated the worker had spent four days in the hospital. When the adjudicator called the mining company, the company told her that the worker had been hospitalized for a pre-existing angina condition. Suspicious about the irregularities, she reported matters to our department, the Special Investigations Branch (SIB), of the WSIB.