Workplace injury

“ That the mere fact that an injury happens to an employment, that in and of itself makes that employment dangerous, any more than every industry is dangerous.
Chairman Mercer: It has got to occur within the employment; that is, it has got to be a result of the employment to make it dangerous.
Senator Blaine: In the first place, is it possible to conceive of any employment where there is not a hazard growing out of the employment? If that is true, why not say that every employer shall compensate under the terms of the act, regardless of whether he is engaged in a hazardous occupation or not. ”

“ Ordinarily an employer knows when an injury occurs. The law in most of our States compels the employers to report, and yet if the injured person fails to report within a very limited time, his right of recovery is barred. ”

“ In our view, when the employer's negligence impairs or destroys an employee's health by requiring him to work under conditions likely to bring about such harmful consequences, the injury to the employee is just as great when it follows, often inevitably, from a carrier's negligent course pursued over an extended period of time as when it comes with the suddenness of lightning. Silicosis is as much 'injury,' leading in time as certainly to permanent disability, as scalding from a boiler's explosion. ”

“ In ignoring any possible negligence of the employee producing or contributing to the injury, the lawmaker reasonably may have been influenced by the belief that, in modern industry, the utmost diligence in the employer's service is in some degree inconsistent with adequate care on the part of the employee for his own safety; that the more intently he devotes himself to the work, the less he can take precautions for his own security. ”

“ More working-men are injured in the industries of the United States, in proportion to the number employed, than in any other country in the world. To let the working-man and his family alone bear the burden of injury or death is recognized as an injustice. ”

“ It should not be necessary to bring a damage suit against the employer; that method is slow, dubious, and expensive; the corporation, with its expert lawyers, has too great an advantage over the helpless and sorrow-struck poor. In some form, automatic compensation for injuries is destined to become universal; the cost will fall upon the industry, where it belongs, bad feeling between employer and employee will cease, the courts will be freed from a good deal of work, and relief will follow injury with promptness and certainty. ”

“ If the employee is no longer able to recover as much as before in case of being injured through the employer's negligence, he is entitled to moderate compensation in all cases of injury, and has a certain and speedy remedy without the difficulty and expense of establishing negligence or proving the amount of the damages. ”

“ In effect, the statute requires the employer, instead of the employe, to assume the pecuniary risk of injury or death of the employe attributable to hazards inherent in the employment and due to its conditions and not to the negligence of the employe killed or injured. ”

“ We have never known parties more willing to subject themselves to dangers of life or limb because, if losing the one, or suffering in the other, damages could be recovered by their representatives or themselves for the loss or injury. The dread of personal injury has always proved sufficient to bring into exercise the vigilance and activity of the servant. But, however this may be, it is indispensable to the employer's exemption from liability to his servant for the consequences of risks thus incurred that he should himself be free from negligence. ”

“ In the nature of things, there is more or less of a probability that the employee may lose his life through some accidental injury arising out of the employment, leaving his widow or children deprived of their natural support ”

“ Under the ordinary American rule continuance at his work by the employé with knowledge of a dangerous defect in machinery or in his place of employment can mean but one thing—a conscious, willing assent to the continuance of the danger to his life or safety, and a voluntary assumption of all chances of personal injury from it, absolving the master from all responsibility for such injuries, even if this defect exists by the master's carelessness or indifference to the employé's safety. ”

“ This is the statutory backdrop against which the Board has developed the narrow requirement that striking employees must take reasonable precautions before or when they strike in order to forestall or address foreseeable, imminent, and aggravated injury to persons, premises, and equipment that might otherwise be caused by their sudden cessation of work. ”

“ For these and all other injuries resulting in total incapacity to work, there must be paid to the injured employee weekly, while incapacitated, compensation equal to half of his earnings at the time of the injury, for a maximum and minimum period. ”

“ There is a difference between, on the one hand, tole-rating in the workplace conditions that will result in a certain number of injuries or illnesses, and, on the other, actively misleading the employees who have already fallen victim to those risks of the workplace. ”

“ Provided, That no such employee who may be injured or killed shall be held to have been guilty of contributory negligence in any case where the violation by such common carrier of any statute enacted for the safety of employees contributed to the injury or death of such employee. ”

“ The third case is where the injury is caused by reason of the negligence of any person in the service of the employer to whose orders or directions the workman at the time of the injury is bound to conform and does conform, where such injury results from his so conforming. ”

“ The employer was liable for any injury done to third parties by the negligence of his servants but not for injuries done by one servant to another. If, for instance, there occurred at his mills an explosion which killed and wounded both outsiders and his own workmen, the employer might be sued for damages in respect of person or property by the outsiders or their representatives, but injured fellow-workmen had no legal claim because they were in what was called ‘common employment.’ Complaint against this anomaly had been loud and long. ”

“ LABOR PROTECTION: Safety Guards. Employers’ Liability. Insurance, etc. The Needed Law. "In order to protect workingmen against injury by disease or negligent arrangements of machinery and ways, we need a state code of regulations which will prescribe protective devices, provide faithful inspectors and punish those guilty of violating the law. The roundabout method of making employers liable for damages in case of negligence has little effect, because employers can buy legal protection and wage-earners have no money for law suits. Employers’ liability laws may be made more severe and drastic ”

“ Under the old strict common-law rule, a servant or employee could never recover damages for any injury caused in whole or in part by his own negligence, by the negligence of a fellow servant or even by defective machinery, unless he was able to prove beyond peradventure that this existed known to the employer and was the sole and direct cause of the accident. ”

“ If accidents related to work safety occur, production and operation entities must take timely measures to rescue and treat the affected personnel.
Employees who are harmed in accidents related to work safety, if entitled to claim compensation according to relevant civil laws, in addition to enjoying the work-related injury insurance in accordance with the law, have the right to demand compensation. ”

“ A servant, by entering upon and continuing in a given employment, by the fact of such continuance is presumed to have voluntarily assumed the risk of personal injuries he may receive, by reason of the ordinary dangers inherent in the employment, by reason of any defect not necessarily inherent in the employment which he knew and understood as a danger before injury received, whether such defect was occasioned by his master's failure to perform his common-law duty of furnishing his men with a safe place to work or not. ”

“ We might have pending in this country a civil war larger than the Civil War of the sixties was and not do as much injury at the present time as the industrial accidents. Fair people, therefore, are going to be willing to have laws that will tend first to prevent accidents, and, second, to fairly compensate for them, and to do it in such way as to be an inducement to both the employer and employe to prevent the accident. We want society protected also. ”

“ But the law also requires that employers shall personally exercise ordinary care in regard to the safety of the machinery and tackle which the workman must use, and are responsible when an injury happens by the use of unsafe machinery which the employer knew, or by the exercise of ordinary care would have known, was unsafe, and the employe did not know of the defect from his inability to examine or know about the machinery. The employer is not an insurer or guarantor of safety. ”

“ In case of personal injury to a workman arising out of his employment, should his employer be liable for adequate compensation and be forbidden to set up as a defence a plea of contributory negligence on the part of the workman, or the negligence of a fellow workman? ”

“ Small regard for a man’s health is had at any time in the factory. It is nothing to the officials that he is out on the sick list, unless he happens to be drawing compensation for an injury. I remember once, when work was slack in the shed, the day overseer left orders for the night boss to send the men outside in the yard and keep them there for two or three hours shifting scrap iron, in order that they might “catch cold and stop at home, and give the others a chance.”
Accidents, too, are frequent on the night shift; the greater part of the more serious ones happen on that turn. ”

“ If it is proved that the injury to a workman is attributable to the serious and wilful misconduct of that workman, any compensation claimed in respect of that injury shall, unless the injury results in death or serious and permanent disablement, be disallowed. ”

“ It is but recently that even the members of our Houses of Parliament became aware that many of their body formerly had lost health, and even life, from want of a complete ventilation of the Houses, easy to be effected. And at present the havoc made in the crowded workrooms of milliners, tailors, printers, &c. and the injury done to young health in many schools, from similar want of knowledge, are most painful to contemplate. ”

“ The injury did not result solely from the intoxication of the injured employee while on duty, and was not occasioned by the wilful intention of the injured employee to bring about the injury or death of himself or another. ”

“ Employers are required under the Employee's Compensation Ordinance to report any injuries sustained by their employees in work-related accidents. There is no specific legal provision allowing workers to remove themselves from dangerous work situations without jeopardy to continued employment. ”

“ Causes to a person employed in a factory or workshop such bodily injury as to prevent him on any one of the three working days next after the occurrence of the accident from being employed for five hours on his ordinary work, written notice shall forthwith be sent to the factory inspector for the district.
If the accident arises from special causes defined as machinery moved by power, boiler explosions, escape of gas or steam, or use of hot liquid or molten metal, the casualty has to be reported to a Certifying Surgeon as well as to the Inspector. ”

“ Although worker safety and health continued to improve, serious problems remained, particularly in the construction industry. In the first quarter of the year, the Labor Department reported 8,512 occupational injuries, including 2,842 classified as industrial accidents. ”

“ From the American Federation of Labor officers I find that their estimate is that the dangerous machinery that now runs at high speed is also the cause of the increased reports of non-serious accidents, and from an insurance company of Germany I find that accidents of a trivial nature have increased, while those of a fatal nature have decreased, and that the employers are penalized for their negligence. It seems to me that where there is a liability to penalize the employer for negligence it causes him to be more careful in protecting the lives of his workmen. ”

“ The greatest amount of prevention and the largest amount of care exercised by employers anywhere in the world is in those countries which have compulsory or obligatory insurance laws. The reason is very simple: nearly every employer does not think that a [70] catastrophe, due to his negligence, will ever happen. But when you hold him under a compensation act for every accident, big or little, negligent or not, and accidents are happening every day, and there is a good deal of money being paid more or less continually, he will be much more careful. ”

“ Hence, recognizing that injuries to workmen constitute a part of the unavoidable cost of hazardous industries, we will require that it be assumed by the one in control of the industry as employer, just as he pays other items of cost ”