DO INJURED WORKERS PAY FOR REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION

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.