The State ALP Government has signaled its contempt for ordinary workers suffering from Respirable Dust diseases in a report in yesterdays Courier Mail.

Here we have Grace Grace MP and Minister an ex QCU (Queensland Council of Unions) President, cutting back the rights of coal mine workers suffering from black lung and silicosis.

The new changes to the Workers Compensation and Rehabilitation Act 2003, which were introduced to parliament in March, would mean that a dying Queenslander with a life expectancy greater than three years wouldn’t be able to access the lump-sum payment until three years had passed.

What planet does Grace live on? Has she ever met dusted workers and discussed what it is like?

So much for the so called Government commitments from Black Lung White Lies report and Recommendations

I have recently spoken to several ex work mates who have been declared medically unfit due to black lung.

As usual the process is dragged out, the tests and assessment process complicated beyond the understanding of anyone not medically and legally trained.

The Statutory Compensation amounts offered are literally chicken feed to the annual wage of most miners and are an insult to those now permanently disabled with a debilitating and incurable condition.

Of course if the ex worker rejects the Statutory claim ,they are then faced with a years long legal battle for a Common Law Claim.

This is usually after worker has been stood aside for months or years, Workers Compensation starts cutting and then ceasing payments and the worker is exhausting their accumulated leave.

This a lifetime long long sentence workers have been given from a disease known to exist for hundreds of years.

A lifetime of permanent disablement, lowered quality of life, and a shortened life at that.

Grace Grace and the rest of the State ALP are traitors to the workers of Queensland, that pay their inflated salaries

Plans to change rights of terminally ill workers

The rights of terminally ill workers in Queensland would be wound back, according to outraged unions who have slammed the move as “unconscionable”.

Just three years after removing the timeframe that restricted when workers, who receive a terminal diagnosis because of their job, could access the benefit, the government has proposed reinstating it to three years.

And it wants this new timeframe to retrospectively date back to January 2015 – meaning dying Queenslanders’ claims which haven’t been determined yet could be rendered useless.

The “unconscionable” and “regressive” move has been lambasted by unions, with the Queensland Council of Unions submitting that denying workers access to a lump-sum payment at the time of their diagnosis would leave them relying on the compensation system “unnecessarily for years”.

“This would have a serious impact on the worker’s financial and psychological well-being,” it wrote.

In 2019, Industrial Relations Minister Grace Grace introduced laws to strengthen Queensland’s workers compensation scheme, which included removing the two-year time frame in the Act which she described as a great step.

At the time, the Minister acknowledged that some workers who were diagnosed with a terminal illness from their job, such as dust lung diseases or silicosis, had a life expectancy greater than two years “which means they have been excluded from accessing this payment”.

The new changes to the Workers Compensation and Rehabilitation Act 2003, which were introduced to parliament in March, would mean that a dying Queenslander with a life expectancy greater than three years wouldn’t be able to access the lump-sum payment until three years had passed.

The new timeframe would also retrospectively apply to injuries sustained on or after January 31, 2015, which unions and stakeholders have warned would impact workers who have ongoing claims.

The QCU submitted that it was “gravely concerned” about this.

“Changing eligibility mid-claim is not only unfair but in our view is unconscionable,” it wrote.

Ms Grace on Friday said the government was committed to ensuring the workers’ compensation system was fair, and that she was waiting for the parliamentary committee’s report due later this month.

Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union state secretary Rohan Webb submitted that the amendments sought to “substantially wind back benefits for terminally ill workers”.

“Winding back the rights of terminally ill Queensland workers by reintroducing a three-year strict time limit is a retrograde step that will significantly disadvantage workers suffering from diseases such as silicosis, mesothelioma, asbestosis, ‘black lung’ and lung cancer,” he wrote.

“Reimposing an arbitrary time point at which that benefit is accessible will prove detrimental to the physical and psychological well-being of our members.”

Asbestos Disease Support Society’s chair Phil Blair claimed that without a transitional arrangement for people who had ongoing claims, the government was “effectively breaching its duty to ensure ‘injured workers are treated fairly by insurers’”.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/plans-to-change-rights-of-terminally-ill-workers/news-story/202a5dd9ecede2d0360e8289df8cb0aa