LABOUR IN GERMANY

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1798, 22 August 1906, Page 10

LABOUR IN GERMANY

“PATERNAL LEGISLATION.” A German manufacturer w r hose pro* ducts go to all quarters the globe says that not their patents, nor their technical force, but their workmen give them a commanding place in trade. Although German wages are low', there are many advantages which German Labourers en* joy. He enumerates some of these advantages in an article published in the “New’ York Herald.” “Many German concerns own dwelling houses, and rent them to workmen at actual cost. They provide restaurants and meals at actual cost, furnish fuel at wholesale cost, give transportation in. whole or part to employees living at a distance, pay pensions in certain cases, and workpeople’s reading rooms, baths, hospitals, savings banks and cooking schools for girls are maintained. “The annual report of the Imperial Insuraflace Department for 1905, recently submitted to the Reichstag, shows tho sums paid to beneficiaries under tho compulsory insurance laws in force for the protection to workmen. For accident injuries .£6,483,000 was paid to 1,034,773 persons injured, or their dependents. The proportion of the recipients to the total population was about one in sixty. Sick and indigent persons received last year Annuities were granted to 145,412 persons. To these sums is to be added .£8,092.000 paid yearly from the local sick funds (kraukenkasse) throughout the empire as sick benefits, burial charges, etc., making a total of about ,£22,372,000 annually paid aa benefits under the workmen’s insurance laws now in force. During the same year two hundred concerns employing labour paid in gifts to workmen and in permanent funds and other provisions for their welfare, apart from wages, <£5,521,600. “Reference is also made to the measures adopted by tlie Department of Mining of Prussia for miners houses, of » which 8636, with room for 18,962 families, have been provided wholly or partly at State expense. Thirty-two buildings', with 5051 beds, have been provided for unmarried mine employees in the same manner, and are furnished at low prices. “It is perhaps too soon to determine, bow these forms of State and private benevolence may finally come to be viewed by workmen. Large manufacturing concerns, by whom much attention has been given to the class’ of work referred to, have not wholly escaped labour troubles during the last year. The employee class has in some cases shown, an apathy toward present advantages and future rewards for faithful service, and has resorted to strikes and other means to secure higher wages or shorter hours of labour. It can at all events be saicl that the State lias with much ingenuity and skill sought to lessen the distress due to accident, disease, and old age among its wage earners, and that in all parts of the empire private enterprise has done much toward the sam« end. The results are thus far for tin most part satisfactory.”