COMPENSATION FOR ACCIDENTS. The Old Country Wants It.

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 272, 16 September 1905, Page 6

COMPENSATION FOR ACCIDENTS. The Old Country Wants It.

THE Workers' Compensation for Accidents legislation in operation in New Zealand has made employers careful. They insure their men. Sometimes they cover "live" wires in their works, and shield belting. Sometimes they don't. Somebody gets injured, and then they are sorry, for it costs them money under the said legislation. Although in some cases the provisions of the Act have been abused, on the whole.it has been a boon to workers and their employers. * * * Workers in England have probably heard something of our Act, for a great Trade Union Congress, sitting at Hanley, England, passed a resolution approving State insurance and the forcing of employers to compensate workmen for accidents and injuries. There are thousands) of workers in New Zealand. There are millions at Home, and tens of thousands of these are rendered useless by the deadly nature of the trades they engage in, while great

numbers suddenly injured are at once deprived of all means of subsistence, and compelled to beg or go to the work-houses. • • * Any system that will lighten the lot of unfortunates of this description will be a great boonr-^amucli greater boon in England than, in New Zealand, for in the farmer country wages are still small, and ' 'labour" influence is not so strong in proportion. Years ago both, the "ruling" classes and. tihe workers would have looked upon such demands as presumption, and tiie stolid truism, "accidents will happen," would have been all that the injured one was likely to get. • • * , In a recent New Zealand case a man who was permanently disabled at his work recovered heavy damages under the Act. What hope would he have had for decent comfort for his maimed body but for the provisions of that Act ? And where there is one accident in this country of small things and sparse population, there are one hundred in England, a country seething with factories and employing millions of workers., • » * Although England wakes but slowly to the fact that her workers have made her what she is> and are as valuable flesh and blood as the belted earl or the gartered noble, the education of the masses is the reason for a truer estimate of the duties the State owes to the workers. This resolution of the Trade Union Congress has not come before the Imperial Parliament yet, but, with many "labour" members now in the, House of Commons and less antipathy among the. "ruling classes" to the plebeian workers, there seems to be some chance that Old England may again follow in the footsteps 1 of young New Zealand.