ACC - From Injury Prevention to Insurance Products

ACC managers were told recently that, while they’ll still be known as IPMs it will no longer mean Injury Prevention Managers, but Insurance Product Managers.

“Is this silliness, stupidity, or plain ideological idiocy?”, asked Pat Bolster, secretary of the local arm of the Council of Trade Unions, Unions Wellington, last week. “Forget about stopping injuries, or even bandaging them afterwards, put a dollar note on your wounds!” said Bolster.

This follows ACC Minister Nick Smith’s announcement that the National Party plans to open the ACC Workplace account to competition. “It appears that the plan is to undermine ACC, wait for it to ‘have an accident’ while trying to pick up the pieces of a previously extremely well working system, and then privatise it completely. But they are afraid to say so,” says Bolster.

“We know that for every dollar invested in Health & Safety, N.Z’s economy saves $5; that the premiums paid here are much lower than in Australia [according to Price Waterhouse Coopers research]; that the failed the top-down only approach to workplace health & safety is being re-emphasised with union representation being cut out of tri-partite arrangements; and with funding for training workplace Health & Safety Reps being discontinued from next April”, Bolster added.

“This won’t stop the worrying incidence of workplace bullying, as the Dominion Post reported on Friday [17 June]; or reduce the numbers of those catching the bus off to work in the morning, but coming home in a hearse.”

Consequently a Public Meeting is being organised by Unions Wellington.

Notification of Public Meeting: Tuesday June 28th at the St John’s Conference Centre in Dixon Street with lawyer Hazel Armstrong [spokesperson for the ACC Coalition], and Chris Hipkins M.P., the Labour Party’s spokesperson on ACC].
It starts at 6:00 p.m.

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