MINISTER EXPLAINS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18253, 23 November 1933, Page 2

MINISTER EXPLAINS

“CONTRACTING OUT” RELIEF A BOARD DISAPPROVES A reply to representations recently made to the Unemployment Board by the Palmerston North Hospital Board in connection with the contracting out of relief workers was received at a meeting of the board from the Minister of Employment, the Hon. A. Hamilton, through the Minister of Justice, the lion. J. G. Cobbe. The Minister said the Palmerston North Hospital Board appeared to him to be under a certain amount of misapprehension in regard to the position. The aim of the legislation was to relieve employers and their indemnifiers of the necessity of paying compensation for injuries caused by a, previous disability rather than by the work tile worker was required to do. This was not an unreasonable provision since an employer should hardly bo called upon to carry any liability in respect of existing disabilities of his workmen. If lie were the tendency would be to decline to employ disabled workers.

Tlie necessity for the approval of a magistrate to all “contracting out” agreements ensured that the workers’ legal rights were safeguarded. Private employers invariably insured their workers, and they had nothing to gain by “contracting out” workers since they were not carrying the liability for compensation. If their indemnifiers —the insurance companies—who, like the Unemployment Board at present, were carrying the liability, became aware of disability in a worker which would bring the case within the “contracting out’’ of tlie Act, lie was sure that the companies would not hesitate to arrange for the worker to he •“contracted out'.” “There is even more justification for the board’s action in ‘contracting gut’ than in the ease of insurance companies,” stated the Minister. “The work given to a relief worker is, after all, purely emergency work to tide him over a period, and if is hardly reasonable to expect the board, after giving such work at the expense of special relief funds, to shoulder also tlie responsibility for disabilities not connected witli the worker’s unemployment or his employment on relief works. “The board’s action is not throwing on the hospital boards any liability which they should not carry," said the Minister. On the motion of Mr. A. E. Mansford if was decided that the board should sign “contracting out’’ agreements under protest, and request the members of Parliament to take the matter nn.