The Injured Worker: Living In The Shadow Of Chronic Pain

9 min readDec 31, 2017

“Activism is not about just protesting it literally drives me because I can’t work and I’m in poverty and I’ve dealt with systems like mine that’s given me the runaround. I need to influence politicians or at least influence their constituents so the next time there is an election maybe a die hard liberal who’s an injured worker won’t vote liberal next time. Right? I want to demonstrate to those die hard conservative or liberal what your party has done for injured workers.” — Kevin Jones

The Workman’s Compensation Board–now named the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario (WSIB) — was established in 1914 to administer benefits to injured workers in Ontario through a system modeled on William Ralph Meredith’s “historic compromise,” whereby workers are denied the right to sue employers in exchange for compensation, benefits, and the facilitation of a timely return to work. WSIB is theoretically an independent corporation funded 100 per cent by employers and “overseen” by the Ontario Ministry of Labour.

Kevin Jones has been an injured worker for about 18 years living in chronic pain and pushed to the margins by a system that sees no value in him anymore. Rather than giving in Kevin decided to take to the streets to educate people about what he sees as an injustice towards workers. Along the way Kevin discovered his passion in documenting not only his fight but the fight of others too.

My name is Kevin Jones I’m an injured worker from London Ontario. I run a group called Occupy WSIB (Workplace Safety and Insurance Board) Justice For Injured Workers on Facebook. We do demonstrations and actions outside of festivals here in London to spread awareness about how poorly injured workers are treated by the Canadian Government and WSIB.

I worked for a company called Manac inc trailers. Have you ever seen those 50 foot transport trailer trucks? I used to build the flooring of the trailers and I started in the flooring department. I don’t know if you’ve ever looked under a truck trailer but they got these steel cross members like I beams. Those alone are heavy. So my job was to place these cross members into slots using a hydraulic tool which heavily jerked in a constant repetitive motion.

When I got hurt at work they told me to just go home and rest, and come back on Monday. I’m thinking OK I didn’t know my rights I didn't know anything about workers rights back then. The next day I complained after maybe an hour or two that I was sore and obviously something was wrong. So they just gave me something different to do, light work. I knew at this point I needed medical treatment. But Manac avoiding doing anything about it and preferred just paying for days off. Because it’s cheaper for them to pay me $17 an hour 10 and a half hour shifts than it is to file a claim.

My company had 42 injured workers off work completely no light duties. That’s insane! That’s like one out of every six factory floor workers. How do they even exist? They should have been shut down with fines! My injury went 11 months and then they did a rotation of team leaders they call them. The team leader that I got was a younger guy who was kinda newer to the team leader thing. He had worked in my department years ago and he knew how how bad my job could be. He took me off one night and sent me to the hospital.

So that was the first time they filed anything to say that I was actually hurt. Damage was done right after 11 months. It was repeated scar tissues, tares and strains. The un-diagnosed part is my nerve damage. I know there’s nerve damage I freaking guarantee it from the reaction to my body and what happens and how I feel. The whole freaking side of my face goes numb when I get this neck pain. It’s not like I get any droopiness like a stroke but its the pain. It’s insanity! I don’t drink I don't do hard drugs, suicides not an option for me. So what coping mechanisms do I have right? There’s nobody around to even vent to half the time.

Video from ONIWG

The doctor's say I have Muscle and skeletal repetitive strain injury. But it’s not necessarily what I’ve been diagnosed with, it’s what I haven’t been diagnosed with. Like my rotatory cup and the knots in the side of my neck.

Compensation said years ago that nothing will fix me they want to give me pills to fix the pain rather than addressing my issues. I self medicate with pot and it’s the reason I’m able to get out and do things, like today. But I know that the rest of my day is going to be hell, maybe tomorrow too. But I know that anyways. For example, I’m an advocate for prisoner justice but I swear sometimes that I have a worse life than like a prisoner because I’m by myself. I don’t even have the interaction with a guard whether it’s good or bad, I don’t have any interaction or a regular group to hang out with. I barely even see people in my building because they don’t go out. I look forward to small things like talking with the mailman when he comes to deliver to my home. But people take for granted those small interactions with just humans.

So for the last six weeks while I was in excruciating pain in my neck could I have gone to the hospital? Well the first thing they would say is it’s s due to a workplace injury and technical all the documents show it , but comp doesn’t recognize it as my claim it only recognizes my right side and my shoulder. So you would think that I would be able to get healthcare coverage right?… But no because they think it’s work related I’m kinda screwed right so what the hell. They (Hospital) always have this accusatory tone with me. It’s like oh’ you’re here for drugs? I just turn them down I never wanted not even a Percocet or Tylenol 3 or anything. Because that’s what they want. They want you to come across like your in here three times a week asking for perks or whatever. Because you can get them for free at the hospital.

I went in for mouth pain one time unrelated to my worker injury they gave me freaking two right there soon as I went in. Are you kidding me? But I’m in chronic pain and I can’t get any. Some people might think I’m stubborn because I don’t want to take pills anymore man but I didn't like the side effects and I can ease the pain from time to time self medicating with no side effects it’s just temporary though.

Through my frustration I started to become more involved with activism and documenting what was going on. Six months prior to Occupy London starting was my first experience with protesting WSIB. We went to Toronto, for injured workers day and that year, there was like thousands of people I was blown away. So I took a lot of pictures that day it was my first real experiences. Then we had a protest in London in September again prior to occupy. There was perhaps 60 or 70 of us and we took Richmond street at Fullerton, they had to bring cops in to try and clear us out. That was my first real experience with direct action.

I still wasn’t an activist at that point but if somebody planned an event I would have went to it. So I decided to organize my first action, but nobody showed up, it was just two of us and the two cops shadowed us for the whole protest. They even showed up at my house! They showed up in plain cloths because I’d been posting on Facebook so much about the event (WSIB London office). So they showed up at my place and told me that because I’m the organizer if the event got out of control I’d be held accountable if anything was damaged. I was like dude if anyone shows up it would be injured workers and disabled works and we’re not doing anything man.

So I gave them some information trying to downplay it, saying that there was nothing to worry about. He said well we’re just going to follow you around just so you know. They showed up on the Sunday at my home because I had taken pictures and posted them on Facebook with WSIB employees in them. I remember a WSIB employee had came out and someone had said. hey that guy’s a WSIB manager or something. So he’s standing by my signs on the sidewalk just smoking away so I made it look like I was taking a picture of the sign with him in it and later I posted it. So 10pm Sunday night they (Police) show up at my house, the same cop that was plain clothes. I’m outside sitting on my porch it’s like hey how’s it going? Because I’d seen him walking up and I was like um whats up? And he’s like so um how was your protest there on Friday? I was said there was only the two of us man, you were there you know ha ha kinda thing. He then said you took some pictures of some WSIB employees at your protest on Friday we’re going to need you to take those down. I thought nothing of it and didn't know my rights at the time so I took them down.

And then Occupy started, I don’t really know how I heard of it because I didn’t know anybody from Occupy prior to that. I just happened to see something in my news feed about maybe occupy London or something. Or maybe a newspaper article or something talking about it. So I was like Oh’ yeah I’m geared up for that! I remember I went to the one September 15th that was held at the band-shell, it was a mall group maybe 20 or 30 of us. Took some videos, it was raining and kinda cold. I meet a couple of people that day actually that are even to this day friends and allies.

So the next week was the actual launch of Occupy London which was great it was the first time I had ever used my slogan Occupy WSIB, and I’d made signs up for that very first day. As I was wondering around the event I noticed the messages on the different signs and started to take pictures of them. I also noticed that I was in a place with like minded people that’s how I got into the activist photography. It’s a way for me to take close ups of signs at the protest so people can see what it’s about not just that there is a hundred people at the park right. Anybody could just show that but if you got signage and messages that show what that crowed is there for, and you share that, it helps spread the awareness.

Since that time my twitter is like Boom! Way up! I got 2061 followers now that blows me away because half a year ago I had like 1200 so wow! It’s like cool. Cause some of them are big followers and they retweet my stuff regularly.