UNDERWRITERS’ CRITICISM

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25321, 22 October 1947, Page 8

UNDERWRITERS’ CRITICISM

“EXTRAORDINARY DECISION” ‘The Minister of Labour (Mr A. McLagan) must be aware that he is treading on dangerous ground in his attempt to seize workers’ compensation insurance and convert it into a Statecontrolled monopoly. In view of the dissension it has already created among insurance workers, who rightly fear for their jobs and their future careers, it would be interesting to know just how far industrial labour is backing him in this move, because industrial labour itself is right in the firing line.” says a statement issued by the council of the Fire and Accident Underwriters’ Associations. “No country in the world has been better served in the matter of workers’ compensation insurance that New Zealand, yet the Government proposes to destroy the existing highly-efficient and accepted system and set up a substitute in its place, which is certainly not in the interests of wprkers,” says the statement. “No reason has been given for the Government’s extraordinary decision because no adequate reason exists. The idea of the State monopolising this important section of the insurance business has been flatly turned down by many other countries. “In °ther countries, where insurance has been monopolised, maddening delays occur in payments.” the statement adds. Insurance companies settle claims promptly and in a sympathetic Victoria last year, the establishment of a monopoly had been rejected by the legislature ’at the beheg of the Minister himself. In 1930 a Royal Commission in New Zealand had found against the proposal. It was one subject on which capital and labour agreed in the United States. * J? monopoly not definitely opposed to the interests of organised labour in this country?” concludes the statement. Can the Government afford to ignore the protests that have been made all ove r New Zealand by insurance workers themselves through their union organisation?”