The authors present evidence on the extent to which injured workers in
Ontario in 1979-88 ''paid,'' through lower wages, for ''reasonable ac
commodation'' requirements designed to facilitate their return to work
after their injury. The data source, the Ontario Workers' Compensatio
n Board's Survey of Workers with Permanent Impairments, provides detai
led information on two categories of accommodation: workplace modifica
tions, such as customized equipment and shortened work schedules; and
reductions in physical demands, such as exemption from bending and hea
vy lifting. Employers who rehired their own injured workers appear to
have absorbed virtually all the cost of the accommodations they made,
but employers who hired workers who were injured at other firms shifte
d a substantial portion of the cost of workplace modifications (though
not the cost of reductions in physical demands) onto the injured work
ers, in the form of lower pay.