Occupational Sickness and Compensation: Two New Zealand Case Studies

Abstract

This paper explores the process of seeking compensation for occupational illness under a no-fault accident insurance scheme. It uses two case studies, the first of firefighters who attended a fire at a chemical storage depot, the second of timbermill workers who worked with pentachlorophenol, to illustrate how science can be used to deny compensation to sick and dying workers. The paper suggests that science can be co-opted and used to support business and state interests against workers, and that this ideological support is increasingly hidden behind the development of 'objective' systems of assessing compensation claims.