2

I.—9a

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE. Wednesday, 30th August, 1911. William Thomas Young examined. (No. 1.) 1. The Chairman: Whom do you represent? —I am president of the Wellington Trades and Labour Council and representative of the council here. 2. The Committee will be glad if you will keep within the four corners of the amendments proposed by this Bill, as the Committee fear that if the whole question of compensation to workers is opened up there will be no legislation passed this session for want of the necessary time?— Yes. 3. Your council have considered this Bill?—-Yes, they have considered the Bill in detail, and arrived at certain conclusions, which I am instructed to place before the Committee. 4. So that you represent their views this morning? —Yes. 5. Do you represent the Trades and Labour Councils of other parts of the Dominion?—l have no authority to represent the other councils, but presumably the views I express here on the Bill will be the views of the Trades Councils Federation of Labour. 6. Will you make your statement? —The first question is clause 2of the* Bill. This provides that " In addition to the compensation payable under this section there shall be payable a sum equal to the reasonable expenses incurred in respect of the medical or surgical attendance (including first aid) on the worker in respect of his injury, but not exceeding one pound." First of all, on that particular point I would like to draw the Committee's attention to the Bill of last year. which contains word for word identically the same clause with this exception, that it is .£lO instead of £1. It is perfectly clear to us that'the limitation to £1 for medical expenses is only playing with a very important question. As a matter of fact, it would hardly pay for the first visit of the medical attendant; therefore we are opposed to such a limitation, and think that where a worker is incapacitated in the course of his employment and is laid on one side for .-. given period— especially if he be a breadwinner—he is more entitled to full wages and the cost of his medical attendance than he would be under the ordinary circumstances of life, inasmuch as he has all the ordinary expenses of his home to maintain in addition to the medical expenses incurred as the result of the injury. Therefore what I want to place before the Committee on this point is the resolution arrived at by the Labour Conference at Christchurch this year, and that is to this effect : " That every worker should receive full wages from the date of his injury up to the day he was able to follow his ordinary occupation, and that all medical expenses incurred as the result of such injury be paid by the employer." That is. as I just stated, the resolution of the conference representing organized labour of the country. The Bill itself is an improvement on the existing law, but it is so slight and so inconsequential as to he almost not noticeable. I do not think I have'anvthing further to say on that point, except to again reiterate that £1 —a maximum of £I—for1 —for medical expenses is only playing, and materially playing, with a very large subject; if it was right in the Bill of last year to have a maximum of £10. surely it must be right to have the same amount specified in the Bill of this year, if not more. In regard to clause 3, this proposes to amend section 6 of the principal Act : " Providing that if the average weekly earnings calculated in accordance with this section would exceed five pounds, then, in calculating the average weekly earnings for the purposes of this Act. account may, in the discretion of the Court, be taken of any periods during which the worker has been unable to work because of the intermittent nature'of the employment, if, in the opinion of the Court, it was impracticable that the worker should be employed at other remunerative work during such absence." The latter part of the clause, we think, nullifies the whole clause. Now, this might probably be inserted with the object of meeting perhaps a case such as that of the shearer, who probably during the shearing season earns £5 or more than £"> net- week according to the number of sheep he would put through during the course of the week. The Act provides that the average weekly earnings shall be calculated for the preceding twelve months to the date of accident. Therefore, under the present law, if a shearer met with an accident and at the time of the accident was earning more than £5 per week he would be out of court, and could not claim. This evidently proposes to overcome that difficulty During the course of the year a shearer may be unemployed for some considerable time and perhaps he is not able to secure employment; under the Bill it is left to the discretion of the Court—that is, the Arbitration Court—to decide whether it was impracticable or not that the worker should he employed at any remunerative work during such absence. We suggest that those words in lines 25, 26,' and 27 should be struck out. so th.it the clause will be absolutely plain and do what it is intended to do. . Mr. Fraser: Will the Chairman read section Rof the principal Act? Me should then understand the remarks of the witness better. The Chairman: Section 6, subsection (1), the Workers' Compensation Act, 1908 Poi the purposes of this Act the term 'average weekly earnings' means the average weekly earnings rece ved by a worker while at work during the twelve months preceding the acoident if he ha* been so long employed by the same employer, and if not, then for any less period during which he has been in the employment of the same employer; but in calculating such average no account shall be taken of any periods during which the worker has been absent from work. Witnen: We suggest that the words in the proviso of subsection (1), clause 3, of the Bill— "if in the opinion of the Court, it was impracticable that the worker should be emnloyed at other remunerative work during such absence "-be struck out; if that is done the clause will clearly do what it is intended it should do. All outside of the particular portion of clause 3 that we suggest should be struck out we are in agreement with we suggest sn You mean subclause (2>?-Yes. With regard to (1a), we discussed that at some length and came to a conclusion on it. There might be instances where that clause would possibly inflict an injury in an isolated case, but we cannot deal with isolated cases in such matters.