GE compensation urged
Former General Electric workers pack health coalition meeting and are urged to get political to get action
An effort to get compensation for former workers of General Electric who developed cancer after exposure to more than 3,000 toxins in the workplace took on renewed vigour Wednesday night.
More than 120 people packed the small OPSEU offices in the Mapleridge Plaza to talk about getting compensation for these workers from the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB).
A recent report says that between 1945 and 2000, workers at GE in Peterborough were exposed to more than 3,000 toxins – at least 40 of which were carcinogens.
The report was written by two retired occupational health researchers, Bob and Dale DeMatteo, with help from 10 retirees from the GE plant, and sponsored by Unifor (the plant workers’ union). It was released in May.
On Wednesday, Marion Burton, co-chairwoman of the health coalition, called on the people to get political.
She encouraged everyone to write letters to Peterborough MPP Jeff Leal and to Labour Minister Kevin Flynn to ask for automatic compensation from WSIB for anyone who worked at GE during those years if they later developed cancer.
“Everyone needs to take some political action,” she said. “Write a letter – it will take you minutes.”
But Jim Dufresne, a retiree from GE who has cancer, was sitting in the crowd; he said that over the last three weeks alone, nine former workers have died of cancer.
“If the Minister (Flynn) doesn’t soon do something, there isn’t going to be anyone left,” he said.
Hundreds of former workers have developed cancer. The report states that carcinogens such as asbestos and benzene were used all the time – and the ventilation was extremely poor, in the plant.
Over the past 13 years, more than 660 applications for compensation were filed to WSIB from GE workers in Peterborough. Of those, about 280 received compensation.
But roughly 340 were denied, withdrawn or given up, apparently for lack of scientific proof linking the illness to the toxic exposure.
Just one day after the new report on GE was released in May, Labour Minister Flynn said in an interview that it wasn’t acceptable.
He said he would be seeking a new “expedited” process for former workers to file claims with the WSIB.
Yet there’s been no follow-up from Flynn, said Bob DeMatteo, one of the two occupational health researchers who wrote the report.
DeMatteo said at the meeting on Wednesday that it’s not enough to promise a new system for helping people access WSIB benefits – he wants to see action, which he said has been “sluggish”.
Flynn wasn’t at the meeting on Wednesday and he wasn’t available for an interview earlier in the day. But he did send a written statement to The Examiner.
“This issue is very important to me, my ministry, workers, their families and the community of Peterborough as a whole,” he wrote. “The input we have received so far has been very valuable and informative, and is helping us as we move forward. I strongly believe that occupational diseases must be treated with the same seriousness and important as traumatic injuries, and I, along with MPP Jeff Leal, are committed to working with everyone affected to ensure a just resolution,” Flynn wrote.
Leal also sent a written statement to The Examiner (he wasn’t at the meeting on Wednesday).
“We continue to work diligently with both the Ministry of Labour and the WSIB to see how we can bring resolution to these cases and justice to the affected families,” he wrote.
When DeMatteo spoke at the meeting, he talked about how the plant had extremely poor exhaust.
Picture how it must have been, he said: there were more than 3,000 toxins in the air and little ventilation.
“The building – under those conditions – was a virtual gas chamber,” he said. “What you had was a perfect storm to cause cancer and disease.”
The report describes in detail the toxins that workers were exposed to in each building and in each department, from the plant’s early days until 2000 (when the facility was scrubbed clean.)
It also describes how workers handled these toxins: some immersed their bare hands in vats of chemicals, for instance, or they sawed asbestos boards without using respiratory protection.
DeMatteo said housekeeping was “awful” and workers ate at their workstations.
Workers were not told about the dangers of the large vats of chemicals they were using, DeMatteo added.
“They were constantly told these chemicals wouldn’t do you any harm – you could pour it on your breakfast cereal,” he said.
The report states that GE knew of the harmful effects of asbestos and lead as early as the 1920s and 1930s.
“So they knew they were killing their employees,” DeMatteo said. In a written statement to The
Examiner, GE spokesperson Kim Warburton responded.
“In Ontario, workers who believe they have an illness caused by workplace conditions have the right to submit claims for compensation to the WSIB,” she wrote.
“We fully support the rights of workers to make claims to WSIB. We are aware of the report issued by a local committee and supported by Unifor for review by the WSIB. We recognize that the WSIB is an independent decision-making body and that it may consider information it deems to be relevant in its review process.”
Jeremy Carver, the science advisor to the advocates’ committee, was a cancer researcher at University of Toronto for 26 years. He lives on Stoney Lake and works as a consultant.
He told the crowd on Wednesday that the new report is the “strongest possible evidence” they could use to get automatic compensation from WSIB for anyone who worked at GE between 1945 and 2000 and later got cancer.
He said GE was a “toxic soup” in those years.
“The experiment’s been done, at GE,” he said. “Look at you all – look at how many people got sick.”