MAN’S WORKING LIFE.
A VARIABLE FACTOR. IMPOSSIBLE TO FIX DURATION. AUCKLAND, September 27; “We have -always hesitated to attempt to fix the duration of a man’s working life. I do not know that we have any authority to do so except in cases where a man before an accident has been suffering from disease, and the medical evidence is that his life will be only two or three years.” This observation was made in the Arbitration Court by Mr Justice Frazer in apportioning compensation in a case that concerned a labourer who was 68 years of age. It was suggested that the man had little work in front of him, even if he were in normal health. In cases such as he had illustrated, said his Honor, the court could always .say that the duration of a man’s working life would be three years. The suggestion that the plaintiff in the present action had reached the end of his working days recalled to mind the case of a wharf labourer in Wellington who toiled till he was 96. He was of unusual extraction, his parents being Irish on one side and Dutch Boer on the other, and that possibly accounted for his physical ability at such an advanced age. In any case, there were men at 90 doing work that one would imagine would be well beyond their years.
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Otago Witness, Issue 3890, 2 October 1928, Page 17
Word Count
229MAN’S WORKING LIFE. Otago Witness, Issue 3890, 2 October 1928, Page 17
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