Another community legal aid clinic serving workers injured while on the job says it is making drastic changes to its operations, with staff deciding to take a pay cut and declining to take on new cases, following Legal Aid Ontario’s announcement of funding cuts earlier this month.

Legal Aid Ontario, an agency that funds the province’s 73 community legal clinics, announced the cuts in response to the provincial budget, which slashed 30 per cent from a previously anticipated $456-million provincial allocation for the agency.

In an interview with the Star on Thursday, Danny Kastner, the vice-chair of the board of Industrial Accident Victims Group of Ontario (IAVGO), said the Toronto-based legal clinic’s 10 staff had decided, by consensus, to take voluntarily a 20-per-cent pay cut in order to avoid layoffs.

“This is a genuine crisis for the clinic and for the clients that it serves,” Kastner said.

Like the Injured Workers Community Legal Clinic (IWC), IAVGO’s $1.1-million budget has been slashed by 22 per cent retroactive to April 1, the beginning of the fiscal year.

IAVGO and other clinics that help vulnerable workers have been hit hard by the cuts, he said.

The cuts force the clinic to stop taking on new cases, said Kastner, who added that IAVGO is working on 500 current and pending cases. The clinic also provided services to an additional 750 workers in 2018-2019, he said.

Read more:

Toronto-based injured workers legal clinic to stop taking new cases, lay off 40 per cent of staff following Legal Aid Ontario cuts

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