Workers' compensation

“ While they cover the whole subject, the committee urged an especially strong educational campaign for the recognition of three essential principles in compensation legislation, viz.: that a good workmen’s compensation law must encourage accident prevention; assure compensation, preferably by compulsory insurance, and cover all wage-workers. ”

“ The wage scale regulations for individual groups of the workers and for certain branches of industry or parts thereof, must contain provisions either for the shortening of hours, or for the increase of pay as compensation for particularly harmful, dangerous, difficult or exhaustive labor, and in connection with climatic conditions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Here we import the workmen ready-made and grown-up. We do not grow them in this country, and most of the men who are killed are foreign born, or a large percentage of them. If we fail in securing the compensation law, and it has got to take its regular course, we can get the same results through a different channel. Stop bringing in the men who are grown up, and raise them here, and you won't have the workers to kill, but you will have to conserve the workers in this State and in this nation. Out of 220 firms reporting in Illinois, there are over 200 accidents a month. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.... ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Under § 6 of the Act an employer must pay prescribed minimum wages 'to each of his employees who is engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce', and under § 7 overtime compensation must be given 'any of his employees who is engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce'. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If he does not, his remuneration is not, strictly speaking, wages, for the furnishing of surplus-labor by the worker is a condition sine qua non of wages. When his compensation is split up into wages and supplementary remuneration under the form of profit-sharing or under any other form, the workingman does not furnish less surplus-labor, less unpaid labor ”

“ 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 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 workmen who built the plant must be as fully compensated as those who operate it, but being compensated, they have no claim for [129] recompensation for the same work. To be paid again they must build a new plant. The operators must be compensated for every shoe they make, but they can not reclaim payment over and over again. To receive more pay they must make more shoes.
Both classes of laborers have a right to full compensation for all the labor performed. Neither party has a right to demand a second payment for the same labor. ”

“ With this skill of hand, guided by intelligent thought, comes the right to demand that excess of compensation paid to skilled above the unskilled labor. But the unskilled labor must receive attention, or in the hour of difficulty the employer will not hesitate to use it to depress the compensation you now receive. ”

“ Secondly, however, it may happen that the dearness of the taxed food does not lower the habitual standard of the laborer's requirements, but that wages, on the contrary, through an action on population, rise, in shorter or longer periods, so as to compensate the laborers for their portion of the tax, the compensation being of course at the expense of profits. ”

“ The great difficulty right now in New York is concern as to the scale of compensation. The New York workmen are not satisfied with one-half wages. They have asked recently that the bill be made full wages. ”

“ While I, personally, was in sympathy with the workmen in their desire to have the very best system of compensation that it was possible to obtain, and one better than any they have in Europe, yet I think that the more conservative of the trade-union workmen recognized that we could not go very far beyond the system prevailing in England or in Great Britain until other States, and particularly the adjoining States, should also take up the matter. ”

“ For a couple of decades the efforts of the General Labourers’ Unions took the form of innumerable local and sectional demands, not merely for higher rates of pay, though advances of several shillings per week have continually been secured, but for mutual agreement of piecework rates, a reduction of working hours, insistence on compensation for accidents, the provision of better accommodation or greater amenity in work, and extra allowances for tasks of peculiar strain or discomfort. ”

“ If they are reduced to misery in consequence of the reduction of their wages by the introduction of machinery, the employment of juvenile or female labour, the immigration of foreign labourers, or any other cause, it is a poor compensation to say, that the profits of their employers have been greatly augmented at their expense. ”

“ We are all dependent upon our fellows in one way or another. Some occupations, however, are more hazardous than others and the rule of the past in compelling those engaged in dangerous activities to bear unaided the burden of this great risk, is not right. The Workmen's Compensation Law in this state, which, however, lacks the compulsory feature, has made steady growth in popularity. The heavy decrease in rates clearly indicates economy and efficiency in the administration of the state liability board of awards. ”

“ One item of Labour Protection in occupation might be supposed to consist in guarding against over-exertion, by means of the abolition of piece-work and “efficiency wage.” But this claim, in so far as we find it prevailing in the Labour world, is made more on grounds of wage policy than as a necessary measure of protection. The economic advantages to the workers themselves of these methods of payment are so great that the abolition of “efficiency wage” is not, I think, required either on grounds of wage policy or of protective policy. ”

“ The main purpose of the act is to establish, in all employments except those of household servants, farm laborers, and casual employee a system of compensation according to a prescribed schedule for all employees sustaining injuries arising out of and in the course of the employment, and producing temporary or permanent disability, total or partial, and, in case of death resulting from such injuries, a contribution towards the support of those dependent upon the earnings of the employee ”

“ This result usually arises periodically; and it is equally important, both to the masters and to the workmen, to prevent its occurrence, or to foresee its arrival. In situations where a great number of very small capitalists exist—where each master works himself and is assisted by his own family, or by a few journeymen—and where a variety of different articles is produced, a curious system of compensation has arisen which in some measure diminishes the extent to which fluctuations of wages would otherwise reach. ”

“ The right of trade unions to strike shall be guaranteed. In the event of labor disputes, compensation for damages, but not the threat and levying of penalty payments to enforce judicial decisions, shall be excluded. Wage compensation for production losses indirectly caused by labor disputes is a common burden of social autonomy and shall be reimbursed to the enterprises in accordance with statutory regulations. ”

“ The labor saving machine, too, has played no unimportant part in increasing the workman's compensation. It has raised the quality of the work done and has brought into use a higher grade of skill than was formerly employed. While the labor saving machine is by some regarded as antagonistic to the welfare of the laborer, no farsighted observer can fail to note that it has increased rather than diminished the number employed at the work into which it has been introduced, while it has developed a higher skill which, in turn, has secured a higher compensation. ”

“ When the computed earnings of the greater part of manufacturers, accordingly, are nearly upon a level with the day wages of common labourers, those of masons and bricklayers are generally from one-half more to double those wages. No species of skilled labour, however, seems more easy to learn than that of masons and bricklayers. The high wages of those workmen, therefore, are not so much the recompense of their skill, as the compensation for the inconstancy of their employment. ”

“ Most regulations of business necessarily impose financial burdens on the enterprise for which no compensation is paid. Those are part of the costs of our civilization. Extreme cases are conjured up where an employer is required to pay wages for a period that has no relation to the legitimate end. ”

“ An employer may organize a relief organization for the payment of benefits. He may tax his employees for a greater or less part of the expenses of the department. He may then make employment conditional upon the workman’s joining the association and signing a pledge agreeing, in consideration of the payment of the regular benefits, to release the employer from all claims for injuries. Such contracts are valid, since, according to the ingenious interpretation of the courts, they do not waive damages, but choose between two sources of compensation. ”

“ We should then be able to alter the conditions of labour, and after securing to all the workers a fair remuneration according to the value of their work, and equalising and reducing the hours of toil, the surplus would pass into the coffers of the State, and we could use it in public works, and in bestowing pensions on the aged and infirm. ”

“ 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. ”