Workers’ Compensation.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 155, 12 July 1901, Page 2

Workers’ Compensation.

(To the Editor of the Times.)

Sir, —Might I bo permitted to make the following observations with regard to your loader on the above subject : (1) As the Act has only boon in force ten minutes, it follows that the cases quoted from the Mercantile Gazette are only suppositious ones. In the same way the Advances to Settlors' Act was going to ruin the colony, yet those who cursed it then now call it blessed. The Contractors aud Workmen’s Lien Act was going to drive capital out of the country and ruin industry. So far it has done neither of

these things. . , . (2) If there was such a risk from the Act as your leader would assume, ,ln i you think the Insurance Companies would be breaking their necks falling over one another to secure such hazardous risks at a nominal price (ten shillings per centum upon the gross amount of wages likely to be paid during twelve months; '! (3) Put the thing on the very lowest ground. Do you think that, say at the instance of the two men working on the jerry-built scaffold, that their wives and children should suffer for the culpable neglect of the employer while the latter should go scot free ? My experience of the ordinary workman is that, provided with proper appliances, he very seldom meets with an accident, and if the Act makes the value oE a laborer’s life and limb higher than some people measure it, I for one won’t quarrel with it.—l am, etc., Sine Qua Non,