Accident Insurance, Sickness, and Science: New Zealand's No-Fault System

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Abstract
This article explores the process of seeking compensation for occupational illness under a no-fault accident insurance scheme. The author uses two case studies—firefighters who attended a fire at a chemical storage depot and timbermill workers who worked with pentachlorophenol—to illustrate how science can be used to deny compensation to sick and dying workers. The results of the studies suggest that a no-fault accident compensation scheme, considered to be a victory for workers, offers no guarantee of just outcomes for working people. And science can be co-opted and used to support business and state interests against workers; this ideological support is increasingly hidden behind the development of “objective” systems of assessing compensation claims.