Story: Workplace safety and compensation
Page 2 – Workplace compensation, 19th and 20th centuries
In 1882 the Employers’ Liability Act was introduced. This gave an injured worker the right to claim compensation from an employer who had contributed to causing an injury through negligence. Workers had no automatic right to compensation for their injuries, and sometimes had to sue their employers to prove negligence. These cases were expensive and often unsuccessful.
In 1891 the Factories Act set up the first system for inspecting factories and enforcing safety regulations.
Mining accident levy
In the notoriously hazardous mining industry, the government charged employers a levy from 1891 to compensate injured miners. Workers also set up their own life insurance schemes through their trade unions. However these combined funds were not enough to compensate for the large number of accidents and serious disasters. An explosion in the Brunner mine in 1896 killed 65 miners, leaving more than 200 women and children without an income. The surviving families sued the mine owners, but after a long legal battle they received only a small payout, leaving the community impoverished and divided.
Workers’ compensation, 20th century
In 1900 the Workers’ Compensation Act introduced a ‘no-fault’ principle. Compensation for industrial accidents no longer depended on proving an employer had been negligent. The act provided injured workers with weekly benefits, or compensated their families if they were killed at work. Employers were encouraged to take out insurance to cover themselves against payouts under the act. However the benefits paid were small and lasted for a maximum of six years.
For the first half of the 20th century workers continued to find it difficult to receive adequate compensation for injury or death at work. The watersiders’ union president, ‘Big Jim’ Roberts, told his members, ‘If you lose [your life], the stevedoring contractor or the shipowners will not supply you with another, nor will they keep your wife and dependants. When the workman is filling in his time in the local cemetery, they will go to the courts of law and try to deprive his dependants of their legal compensation.’1
Rehabilitating war veterans
After the First World War injured and frequently unemployed veterans were common all over the country, and many suffered hardships. It became clear that better systems were needed to compensate injured people and rehabilitate them into the workplace and ordinary life. The rise of the welfare state in the 1930s made the state seem the logical provider for compensation and rehabilitation.
Veterans from the Second World War were anxious not to repeat the social betrayal of the injured soldiers in the earlier war. In 1947 it became compulsory for employers to take out insurance against workplace injuries. Three years later a Workers’ Compensation Board was set up to insure workers whose employers failed to provide sufficient coverage for them, and to promote accident prevention. This board was funded by collecting levies from accident insurers and some employers.
