WORKERS’ COMPENSATION

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 3 September 1926, Page 5

WORKERS’ COMPENSATION

INCREASES APPROVED OF.

(by TELEGRAPH —PRESS ASSOCIATION.) WELLINGTON, Sept. 2. On tho third reading of the Workers’ Compensation Amendment Bill in tlie House of Representatives to-night Mr W. A. Parry (Auckland Central) said the Workers’ Compensation Act was one o±' the best pieces of industrial legislation which graced the Statute Book of any country in the world. This amendment gave to the workers’ relatives compensation to the extent of £IOOO on death. The Labour Party was still as ardent as ever in demanding that full wages be paid to an injured man during tho period of his incapacitation, for the denial of which there were no logical reasons, but so far ns it went the Labour Party was thankful for the Bill.

Mr E. .T. Howard (Christchurch South) pointed out as an anomaly of the existing law that if a carpenter and labourer met with exactly tlie same kind of accident on the same building the carpenter would receive fifty per cent, more compensation than the labourer, and if a man and a woman met with similar accidents the man would receive three times the amount of compensation paid to the woman. That was not justice. Compensation should be paid on the basis of the injury; not on a percentage of the wages received. He advocated a State monopoly of accident insurance with a view to reducing the cost of administration, so leaving more for compensation. , • • , The Hon. G. J. Anderson said the best system of workers’ compensation was that in force in Canada, because if a Worker was so injured that he was unable to pursue his usual calling the board assisted him to get into some other employment. Workers’ compensation was as much a social duty as the provision of pensions, and he proposed to investigate it along those lines. The Bill was read a third time.