WORKERS’ COMPENSATION

Evening Star, Issue 22446, 17 September 1936, Page 10

WORKERS’ COMPENSATION

GOVERNMENT TO INTRODUCE IMPROVING BILL MINIMUM PAYMENTS SUBSTANTIALLY RAISED [From Our Parliamentary Retort**.] WELLINGTON, September 17. The main amendments to the Workers’ Compensation Act are not being submitted this session, but Mr Armstrong (Minister of Labour) will immediately introduce a measure improving to some extent workers! compensation and eliminating some of the anomalies that are in the present enactments. Mr Armstrong said the Bill would contain only a few clauses. One would increase the minimum compensation in cases of fatal accidents from £3OO to £SOO. It would also be provided that the weekly payment should not be less than £2 a week in any case, the present law permitting payments as low as £1 a week. Relief workers and others whose weekly average earnings worked out at a low rate would benefit considerably under this clause. The Bill would outline the method of computing the average earnings for the last 12 months, and compensation would be, granted to the extent of 66 2-3 per cent, of the actual rate earned at the time of the accident. “ It will not bo necessary to go back over the year to ascertain what the worker has actually earned,” said the Minister. “It will,be,assumed that he was working full time at the rate paid him on the day of the accident.” The Minister said that under the existing law an employer or an insurance company, on the report of their own doctor, could stop a man’s compensation. The onus was then thrown on the worker to go to the'expense of bringing a case before the Compensation Court, and there was the possibility of a delay of five or six months. Many workers were in effect starved into agreeing to an amount to wipe out their claims, as they had' no nioney to tide' them over the period involved. An amendment would, brine the law into conformity with that of England—that compensation must be computed by a court or through medical referees. ' Another important clause will rank compensation with wages in cases of bnakruptcy. ■