WORKERS' COMPENSATION ACT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26848, 12 August 1948, Page 6

WORKERS' COMPENSATION ACT

Sir,—ln your issue of August 4 you publish a statement by Mr F. A. Hallaby, chairman of the New Zealand Insurance Company. Ltd., at its annual meeting deprecating the working of the provisions’' of the Act as a State monopoly.” As one who worked for and supported the introduction of the original legislation to every branch of our industrial life, and as a State monopoly, I think the only fault, if any, at the present time is that State monopoly has been too long delayed, and private interests allowed to reap the State-created harvest of premium profits that should have been used for an increase in compensation to the victims of industrial accidents and reductions of premiums to insurers. It is a clear case of private interests reaping where they never sowed, whilst the policy they adopted with claims for compensation involved the victims of accidents toq often in long-delayed settlement of Just claims, and the incurring of expenses by delays and legal quibbles, reduced to a miserable moiety the net sum in compensation they should have received. There should be a genuine welcome by employees and employers to State monopolisation of workers’ compensation—a simple act of justice and State policy too long deferred.—l am, etc., Middlemarch. W. D. Mason.