Workers' compensation law

“ Here again, however, Congress made clear its purpose to permit state compensation protection whenever possible by making the federal law applicable only 'if recovery for the disability or death through workmen's compensation proceedings may not validly be provided by State law.'
Harbor workers and longshoremen employed 'in whole or in part, upon the navigable waters' are clearly protected by this Federal Act; but, employees such as decedent here occupy that shadowy area within which, at some undefined and undefinable point, state laws can validly provide compensation. ”

“ The Fair Labor Standards Act was not designed to codify or perpetuate those customs and contracts which allow an employer to claim all of an employee's time while compensating him for only a part of it. Congress intended, instead, to achieve a uniform national policy of guaranteeing compensation for all work or employment engaged in by employees covered by the Act. ”

“ Briefly, nearly every class of industrial worker is included under the Austrian law, which is administered by special territorial insurance institutions, each of them embracing Austria. particular classes of industries or workers. The institutions are managed by committees, one-third of the members of each committee being chosen by the minister of the interior, one-third by the employers and one-third by the workers. Compensation is payable, in case of accidents, on a scale proportionate to the injured person’s wages during the preceding year. ”

“ This necessitates that the workweek be computed on the basis of the hours spent in actual work and that compensation be paid accordingly. And even those employers who pay wages above the minimum and who maintain no substandard working conditions must respect this statutory pattern. Conversely, employees are not to be deprived of the benefits of the Act simply because they are well paid or because they are represented by strong bargaining agents. ”

“ Certainly I can say without hesitation that working men would never have got their due from the Workmen’s Compensation Acts if each particular poor workman had had to fight for his rights at his own expense. It is to the trade unions and their co-operative litigation that the thanks of the workmen are due for preserving their rights under the Act. ”

“ A strenuous campaign has been carried on in all the states for laws providing automatic compensation for injured workers or their dependents and support has been given to all reasonable bills, as the association realized that a perfect and uniform workmen’s compensation system for the whole United States can be secured only step by step. ”

“ Neither the policy of the Act nor the legislative history gives any real basis for excluding piece workers from the benefits of the statute. This legislation was designed to raise substandard wages and to give additional compensation for overtime work as to those employees within its ambit, thereby helping to protect this nation 'from the evils and dangers resulting from wages too low to buy the bare necessities of life and from long hours of work injurious to health.' Sen.Rep. ”

“ Take away all opposition before you have your hearing, because the minute you start opposition you begin the death of the bill. It is a slow illness, but it means death. If we can bring about something that will not be too radical, that will not be too harsh on the employers, we will get something for the workmen.
I believe, as Mr. Mitchell said, that the workman ought to have his right under the common law, but failing in that he should not be allowed to go to the compensation act. ”

“ The workingmen of the country are aware now of the conditions that prevail in other countries and we are very much dissatisfied with the conditions we now have. Employers themselves are going outside of the law to try and compensate workmen for injuries. Practically all of the large employers in the United States recognize and concede the inequity of the present law, by trying on their own account to draft some system to pay workmen more money wherever there exists a necessity for speedy relief. ”

“ I know that large employers in general are in favor of a fair compensation act, but I do not think they are in favor of double liability, because they will never know where they are. The laboring man quite properly wants to have a fair compensation act and wants a fair amount, but if he elects to go to common law, he should take that chance. ”

“ The Workmen’s Compensation Act is a practical business machine of a complicated character, and it is scarcely a sensible thing that the men who have to keep it going should work under the theoretical direction of men who have never seen it working. ”

“ Of what value would a compensation law be to the workman in the State of Illinois particularly, where we have no employers' liability law, if the gate were left open for the insurance company or the mutual benefit company, or if the employer could bring in the old common law doctrine of contributory negligence, assumption of risk, and so forth? What would prevent the employer or the insurance company, if we did not repeal those laws, from bringing those in and keeping the workingman out of his compensation under a compensation law? ”

“ Labor has generally favored measures that extend the inquisitional and regulative functions of the State, excepting where this extension seemed to interfere with the autonomy of labor itself. Workshops, 250 mines, factories, and other places of employment are now minutely inspected, and innumerable sanitary and safety provisions are enforced. A workman’s compensation law removes from the employee’s mind his anxiety for the fate of his family if he should be disabled. The labor contract, long extolled as the ægis of economic liberty, is no longer free from state vigilance. ”

“ Even if we suppose that strike benefits are made to compensate in a sense for the loss of wages, the principle of payments in compensation does not apply because the thing compensated for, the wages, had they been received, would have been included in gross income. ”

“ The Workmen’s Compensation Act will always, I think, be regarded as one of his greatest achievements, and mauled and mangled as it has been in the Law Courts it remains the most substantial benefit that the poor have received from the Legislature in my lifetime. ”

“ As to what is a dangerous employment, as to whether or not you should cover some or all, I have no doubt that there is not a man in this country, a farmer, a mechanic, a laboring man, a doctor, a lawyer or any other professional man, but what is perfectly willing to have and desires to have a fair compensation law if he can know just what it is going to cost him, and just what his insurance will cost him, in order to avoid the present uncertainties and evils that flow from existing conditions. ”

“ The mutual insurance portion of the workmen's compensation is that which makes it really powerful and in the end, economical and just. Every state in this country adopting a workmen's compensation law will have to provide some such arrangement before thoroughly good results can be obtained. ”

“ The overwhelming majority of workers in the United States are covered by state rather than federal programs, and thus we may refer generally to workmen's compensation as a program of the States.↑ The Senate Committee on Finance, with which the 1965 amendment originated, took note of 'the concern that has been expressed by many witnesses in the hearings about the payment of disability benefits concurrently with benefits payable under State workmen's compensation programs.' S.Rep.No.404, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. ”

“ Another provision, §541.604 (b) , focuses on workers whose compensation is “computed on an hourly, a daily or a shift basis,” rather than a weekly or less frequent one. That section states that an employer may base an employee’s pay on an hourly, daily, or shift rate without “violating the salary basis requirement” or “losing the [bona fide executive] exemption” so long as two conditions are met. First, the employer must “also” guarantee the employee at least $455 each week (the minimum salary level) “regardless of the number of hours, days or shifts worked.” ”

“ But we cannot concede that impairment of earning power is the sole ground upon which compulsory compensation to injured workmen legitimately may be based. Unquestionably it is a rational basis, and it is adopted for the generality of cases by the New York law. But the Court of Appeals has construed the 1916 amendment as permitting an allowance for facial or head disfigurement although it does not impair the claimant's earning capacity. ”

“ The great object of the Workmen's Compensation Act is to shift the burden of such economic waste from the employer to the industry, in order that it may ultimately be borne by the consumer as a part of the necessary cost of construction and production. Thus we are asking the master to assume a greater financial responsibility for injuries to his servant under this new theory than he has assumed heretofore. This can be taken care of by the increased price he charges for his work and this in turn will ultimately pass the added burden to the community at large. ”

“ The law expressed the constitutional and legislative policy of the state to be that the compensation to workmen for injuries received in their employment was a matter of public concern, and should not be left to the individual employer or employe, or be dependent upon or influenced by the hazards of controversy or litigation, or inequality of conditions. ”

“ If some State will take the lead and adopt a comprehensive system of compensation, and put it up to the courts and have decisions rendered, we would then know just what we could do. In any event, gentlemen, I believe that the workingmen will not be at all satisfied either with the suggestion sometimes made of a contribution on their part or with any law that removes from the employer the incentive to prevent accidents. ”

“ Therefore, I think, the idea that the working people have—that they want access to the courts under the law—is more of a bugaboo than anything else, and that after a good compensation law is passed we will have a great deal of trouble in our organization in trying to teach the people to take the compensation and stay out of the courts. ”

“ If better laws or better wages attract better workmen, then there is a compensation to an employer even though his wage-scale be higher or his cost greater than prevails in a competitive industry in another State. The best workmen are attracted to those industries and to those localities where conditions of employment are most satisfactory, and I dare say that every employer will agree that the best workman is to him the cheapest workman even though his wages be higher.... ”

“ Workmen's Compensation legislation rests upon the idea of status, nor upon that of implied contract; that is, upon the conception that the injured workman is entitled to compensation for an injury sustained in the service of an industry to whose operations he contributes his work as the owner contributes his capital-the one for the sake of the wages and the other for the sake of the profits. ”

“ The Washington compensation act established a state fund for the compensation of workmen injured in hazardous employment, and the fund was maintained by compulsory contributions from employers in such industries. While classes of industries were established, each class was made liable for the accidents occurring in that class. The Court described the law as so operating that 'the enforced contributions of the employer are to be made whether injuries have befallen his own employees or not ”

“ No one would deny the learning, subtlety and weight of the judgments in the Court of Appeal on the Workmen’s Compensation Act, but, speaking as a common arbitrator who has to work the Act at first hand and make it human food for shattered men and widows and orphans, they have not tended to make my task easier, they have not simplified and assisted the scheme as a compensation scheme, and they have not been in harmony with the spoken intentions of the author of the scheme. ”

“ Any employer who violates the provisions of section 6 or section 7 of this Act shall be liable to the employee or employees affected in the amount of their unpaid minimum wages, or their unpaid overtime compensation, as the case may be, and in an additional equal amount as liquidated damages. ”

“ The act does not touch the workman’s rights at common law or under the Employers’ Liability Act, but the workman, if more than one remedy is open to him, can enforce only one. When the circumstances create a legal liability in some other person, e.g. where the injury is caused by the negligence of a sub-contractor or of a stranger, in such cases the employer, if required to pay compensation under the act, is entitled to be indemnified by such other person. ”

“ I think that is the way to go at it in this country. If the employer and the workman both profit by the enterprise they should both assume the risk of the trade, and that principle, I think, is what is established by our compulsory compensation bill. ”

“ Thus, where work is done by an employee, with the employer's consent, a labor organization's demand that the employee be compensated for time spent in doing the disputed work does not become an unfair labor practice. The transaction simply does not fall within the kind of featherbedding defined in the statute. In the absence of proof to the contrary, the employee's compensation reflects his entire relationship with his employer. ”