A web exclusive: As part of CBC's investigation into safety in Canadian workplaces, Dying for a Job associate producer Bilbo Poynter followed one Toronto woman, injured at her production line job, for 10 months as she sought recognition of her injury, and dealt with the lasting effects of her accident.

Halima Tato (Chris Harbord/CBC)

MEDIA

Audio: Marion Endicott of the Injured Workers' Consultants reading from Halima Tato, injured Canada Bread worker's account to the WSIB of her injury.
[April 6, 2006 - Runs 1:29]

Audio: Halima Tato describes what she felt after her injury.
[Runs :35]

"I was so excited when I get that job, I was like my dream come true. I was a good worker and I find something that I can do and live independent and take care of myself and my kid. I feel like it was a door open for me."

Then, early in April 2005, Halima was injured while working in Canada Bread's Rivermede facility in North York removing bad bagels from a production line. The line became jammed and a box of frozen bagels fell down, striking Halima on the back of the head, knocking her to the ground. She didn't know then that this was the end of the dream, and the beginning of a year-long nightmare.

"I do not know how long I was on the ground but I became aware of one worker (saying) to the fellow manning the robot, shouting, ‘Hey what are you doing? You killed a lady.'"

Halima was injured while working in Canada Bread's facility in North York. (Chris Harbord/CBC)

What happened next, according to Halima, is that she was brought into one of the plant's offices, given a bag of ice for her head before being sent in a taxi to a nearby hospital. She says that as she left a plant manager told her, “You have to come to work tomorrow.”

Although the emergency room doctor told Halima to stay home and rest, she says that the company started calling the next morning.

"Yeah, I have to come in. They say, 'It's policy. You have to come in, you cannot stay home.'"

Halima returned to work the next day, working on various production lines over the next few days. She ended up putting stickers on bags of bread in the nurses' station.

According to a spokesperson, Canada Bread does not speak to specific workplace accident claims and wouldn't comment on the story.

After a few days Halima, feeling too sick and dizzy to continue, left the plant never to return. Halima turned to the Injured Workers' Consultants, a Toronto legal clinic that specializes in compensation claims for help getting her claim for compensation recognized by the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board.

Marion Endicott, a lawyer with the Injured Workers' Consultants. (Chris Harbord/CBC)

"We can immediately see this is going to be a problematic case because as soon as you've got a company that is trying to bring somebody in the day after the accident you know you've got a company that tries to fight claims," said Marion Endicott, a lawyer with the Injured Workers Consultants.

According to Endicott, Halima's situation is an example of the pressures companies in Ontario feel, and place on workers to return to work quickly to avoid lost-time injury claims. Under a system called experience rating, Ontario businesses are penalized for having higher-than-industry levels of injury, calculated from their lost-time injury rates. They are also rewarded with rebates from the WSIB if their lost-time injuries are less then other comparable industries. These rebates and surcharges can amount to tens of thousands of dollars each year for Ontario businesses.

"Essentially the way the system works is that you want someone to have no lost-time, that's the best. If you can't have no lost-time, just keep it to as little no lost-time as possible and that's in your interest.”

“So in this case Canada Bread was very, very interested in bringing Halima back to work immediately without having any lost time involved. If they were successful in doing that they would, depending on their record…:they will have avoided a very large surcharge – the surcharges are significant.”

In 2003, for example, the last year that data is available from the WSIB, Canada Bread was fined $357,451.44 in surcharges under the experience-rating program.

Halima says that she would like to work, but the pain and depression she's experienced as a result of the accident means she can't. (Chris Harbord/CBC)

Halima would go on employment insurance, while attending a battery of doctor's appointments. There was no clear diagnosis as to why she now suffered weakness, dizziness, and neck pain, and had no compensation from the WSIB forthcoming. When her EI benefits ran out, and with eviction notices being slipped under her door, she went on welfare, all the while continuing to see neurologists and physiotherapists.

Then in November of last year the WSIB recognized that Halima had been in an accident on the job. But with no clear diagnosis of her head injury her claim was denied.

Halima appealed the decision, this time providing a medical assessment of her injuries that supported her claim that she could no longer work. In January of this year, Halima received her first payment from the WSIB, nearly a year after her accident.

Halima says that she would like to work, but the chronic pain and depression she's experienced as a result of the accident means she can't.

"Because I don't have education. Come from nowhere."