WORKERS’ COMPENSATION.

Taranaki Daily News, 3 September 1926, Page 7

WORKERS’ COMPENSATION.

AMENDMENTS TO THE ACT ANOMALIES POINTED OUT. By Telegraph.—Press Association Wellington, Last Night. On the third reading of the Workers’ Compensation Amendment Bill in the House of Representatives to-night Mr. W. E. Parry said the Workers’ Compensation Act was one of 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 £lo® on death. The Labour Party was still as ardent as ever in demanding that full wages be paid to an injured man during the period of his incapacitation, for the denial of which there were no logical reasons, but so far as it went the Labour Parly ' was thankful for the Bill. Mr. E. J. Howard pointed out as an anomaly of the existing law that if a carpenter and labourer met with exactly the same kind of accident on the same building the carpenter would receive fifty percent. 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 ho 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.