In ES, disabled workers face uphill battles(2)

By law, the insurance companies have a voice, but officially no vote, in CCI decisions. However, many workers say that, given the companies' economic clout, their presence on the Commission is likely to influence its rulings.

This is the view held by Mauricio Edgardo Canizales, a 37-year-old worker who applied for a pension in 2009 when his back, pelvis and leg were broken in an accident, but has not yet received it.

Canizales now has a limp and cannot lift things because of what he describes as terrible back pain, which makes it impossible for him to return to his job as a skilled machine operator.

But in an October 2009 decision, the CCI denied him a pension because he had not yet completed his treatment and rehabilitation.

And when the rehabilitation period ended this year, Canizales was once again denied a pension when the CCI awarded him a 37 percent disability rating.

"Maybe the Commission would only give me a pension if I showed up paraplegic, in a wheelchair," he complained. "For two years I haven't worked and have had no pension; our family is supported by my wife's salary."

But Omar Iván Martínez, assistant superintendent of pensions, denied that the insurance companies swayed the decisions of the CCI to benefit the industry.

"The insurance companies have a right to complain, and of course they are listened to, as a concerned party. But the Commission has rarely issued a ruling that had to be changed later (because it was influenced by the insurance companies)," Martínez said.

The official argued that a balance is needed between the needs of workers and the system's financial health, and that balance, he said, is provided by the "objective" rules on the evaluation of degrees of disability, which determine "with certainty" who merits a pension.

But people who have failed to obtain a disability pension say the rules are interpreted in a way that hurts workers.

That was demonstrated by the case of Roldán, the 54-year-old woman with epilepsy who took the CCI to court.

In 2004, the Supreme Court ruled that the CCI's decision was overly narrow, because it awarded her a 35 percent disability rating based on the vertigo she suffers, while ignoring her epilepsy as a pre-existing condition that she had before she entered the labor market.

"Although the essential function of the Commission is to evaluate degrees of disability and not diseases as such, assessing whether all of the illnesses together influence the ability to work forms part of its work," the Court ruled.

The Supreme Court ordered a new evaluation by the CCI, but Roldán had to wait until this year to find out whether or not justice would win out in the end.