GREATER SAFETY FOR FACTORY WORKERS

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 96, 18 January 1924, Page 10

GREATER SAFETY FOR FACTORY WORKERS

GUARDING AGAINST ACCIDENT A well-known Labour official yesterday referred in appreciative terms to the efforts of the Labour Department in minimising preventible accidents in factories, or, as he put it, making places where workers are employed “fool-proof.” “There is one thing I must congratulate the Labour Department upon,” he said, “and that is their practice of adopting persuasive measures, to gain their objective, instead of using what one prominent Labour leader characterised in the Arbitration Court, ‘force majeure’ against delinquent employers.. It is quite right that the factoiy-own-fers should adopt every possible provision against accident, for even then there are men who ignore their own safety, often with fatal results.. Take three recent cases: A worker tried. to put a belt on a tight pulley. Ignoring the loose pulley, he succeeded in his object, but his sleeve caught in a projecting nail on the light pulley; it was wound round it, the arm followed, and he was drawn round the shaft with fatal results. Another man . was engaged on some work in a lift well; a rope was suspended from a block at the top of tho building, and the worker caught hold of the loose end of the rope and launched himself into the well, falling to the bottom and being killed. The third case was that, of a man who was removing a heavy piece of coping on a building. It was too heavy for one man to hold, and .the man was told to use a rope to relieve him of the weight. He ignored the advice, the coping was detached, ana as he tried to hold it, was precipitated to the ground and killed.” An officer of the Labour Department was also askbd what view owners of factories took in regard to the warn- - ing posters issued by the Department. “Unanimous approval,” he replied. “We have had most encouraging letters from employers expressing gratitude at the attitude taken up by the Department in this matter.