CONTRACT WORKERS

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 279, 22 August 1934, Page 11

CONTRACT WORKERS

Protection of 1922 'Act FUNERAL COST AWARDED A claim for funeral expenses incurred following the death by accident of a man engaged on a scrub-cutting contract has been successful in the Court of Arbitration. Mr, Justice Blair has delivered judgment for £2O/6/6, the amount claimed, also costs, In favour of Martha Williamson, of Trentham.

The other party to the dispute was Kamahiku Ltd., a farming company on whose farm the plaintiff’s son, James Richard Williamson, was engaged on scrub-cutting by contract.

“It is well known,” the judgment states, after reviewing the legal position under the Workers’ Compensation Act, 1922, “that a great number of workers are employed in mines and in the clearing of laud upon the contract system, and' although they are workmen well within the class intended to be benefited by the Workers’ Compensation Act it is not practicable to employ them on a time basis. Contractors are without the benefit of the Act and the Legislature intended to give the benefit of the Act to a large class of workers who, because of the exigencies of their occupations, could be employed only upon a contract system but actually arc workers in the real understanding of the word.”