The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-05-29 00:00:00

THE EMPLOYERS' LIABILITY BILL.

The Government Bill, introduced by Mr. Dodson,
Mr. Chamberlain, the Attorney-General, and Mr.
Brassey, to extend and regulate the liability of em-
ployers to make compensation for personal injuries
suffered by workmen in their service, has been just
issued. It consists of four clauses, and provides that
where, after the passing of the Act, personal
injury is caused to a workman by reason of de-
fective works, plant, machinery, or stock connected
with the business of the employer, or by reason of the
negligence of any person the service of the employer
who has superintendence entrusted to him, or
to whose orders or directions the workman was bound
to conform, or by reason of the act or omission of any
person in the service of the employer done or made in
obedience to the rules or bye-laws of the employer, or
in obedience to instructions given by any person dele-
gated with the authority of the employer, the work-
man or his representatives shall have the same right
of compensation and remedies against the employer
as if he had not been engaged in the service of the
latter, provided that he did not materially contribute
by his own negligence to the cause of his injury.
Every action for recovery of compensation in which
a sum not exceeding £2OO is claimed shall be brought
in a County Court, and assessors may be appointed
for the purpose of ascertaining the amount of com-
pensation.

The Tiines has the following leader on the Em-
ployer's Liability Bill :
Mr. Dodson's Bill to extend the liability of employers for
personal injuries suffered by workmen in their service is a
fair concession to a demand which the working classes have
been long urging. The Bill made some important changes
in the existing law, and though it does not concede all
that has been asked, it concedes a great deal. It does
not go so far as to abolish absolutely the well-known
rule of "common employment," but it restricts and
modifies it in the points where it has been most com-
plained of and where it has been found to press most
hardly. It decrees substantially that wherever the
supreme employer has delegated nis authority to a subordi-
nate he shall be responsible in damages for his subordinate's
act or neglect. It does not say that where one workman
injures another, directly or indirectly, the injured man shall
have the right to claim compensation from his employer.
This right is given only where the fault has been committed
by some one who has had superintendence intrusted to him,
or to whose orders or directions the injured man has been
bound to conform. If the injit.'y can be traced to rules laid
down by the employer or by his representative, or to some
defect in the plant or machinery connected with the employer's
business, the right to compensation is given. Where it has
resulted from the fault or carelessness or disobedience of a
fellow-workman the rule of common employment may still
be pleaded by the employer, and will absolve him from all
liability. Mr. Dodson's Bill does not, therefore, give all
that has been demanded by the section of working men for
whom Mr. Macdonald has been the Parliamentary spokes-
man. it gives what the railway servants have always de-
clared they would be satisfied with, and it removes some
great grievances which they and all other servants of a com-
pany or a large firm have been suffering under, not without
protest.
The legal rule of common employment has not worked
justly in the modern industrial world. We may conceive
that when the operative was the mere slave of his em-
ployer the injury he suffered, from whatever cause,
was the employer's loss, just as an injury to any other
piece of machinery would have been. The free working man
has parted with the customary rights of the slave, but under
the law of common employment he has not obtained other
rights in the place of those which he has lost. If he was
injured, indeed, by his employer's own act, compensation
has been his legal due. But in very few cases has this riglit
been of any practical service to him. Employers, and espe-
cially large employers, do not now-a-days personally super-
intend their workmen. They may have works going on in
a variety of places, and nowhere under their own eye. The
foreman or superintendent takes their place so far, and
exercises authority and gives orders in their name.
Now, as concerns the outside public, the act
of the delegate and of all under him has been
recognized as the employer's act. Whether a train
is wrecked by the fault of the traffic manager or of the
engine-driver, the injured passengers can equally claim
damages from the railway company. The men in the com-
pany's service would have no claim in either case. They
may have suffered in obeying orders with which they were
bound to comply, but they have been in the service of the
same employers as the man who has given the orders, and
this has been a sufficient bar. The result has been that no
railway servant who has been injured on his own line has
ever been able to insist upon compensation from the com-
pany. His employers, whether directors or shareholders, have
been far away from the scene of accident and have not per-
sonally contributed to it. It is true that not every railway com-
pany has chosen to avail itself of its full legal rights. Some,
and, indeed, a majority of them, have so far waived their
rights as to recognize a class of claims which the law could
not have been used to enforce. The working man, under
Mr. Dodson's Bill, will be able to obtain the same treatment
from them all, and he will obtain it as a matter, not of
charity, but of right. On one point, indeed, the Bill does
not speak clearly, and it will be open to the Law
Courts to find a meaning in it more or less favour-
able to the workman. Where a single workman or
a gang of men is acting under the orders of a super-
intendent the language of the Bill is precise, and
the law of common employment will be no defence for
the employer if the superintendent has been in fault. But
there is a class of cases for which the Bill does not thus cer-
tainly provide. Let us suppose, for example, a railway acci-
dent for which the pointsman is alone to blame. The driver
of the train has followed signals, and an accident has been
the result of his doing so. Will he, in the event of his being
injured by it, have a claim for compensation against the
railway company? To quote the words of the Bill, will
the pointsman be a person in the service of the employer
to whose orders or directions the driver is bound to con-
. .

form? Or, suppose, again, that the driver- of tVe—tr-ainTi-a-s
disobeyed signals, and that the guard or the stoker has re-
ceived injury from the neglect. Neither of these latter has
been at fault, as principal or as a contributory. Either,
therefore, would have a moral claim to compensation. But
does Mr. Dodson's Bill propose to give them a legal claim?
The case here is not the same as that of a body of masons one
of whom has done an injury to a fellow-workman in the course
of his work. For this and such like accidents the Bill quite
certainly and quite properly omits to provide. But where the
tie of common employment is less close, and where no
amount of care on the part of the injured man could have
done anything to prevent the mischief it seems a little hard
that no claim to compensation should be allowed. It is
difficult, we admit, to define cases. The bricklayer proper
who was hurt by a plasterer or a slater might come in under
any form in which the extended rule could be laid down;
but he could certainly not be thought to have anything like
the same moral claim to be considered.

But, whatever injustice, if any, survives the passing of
Mr. Dodson's Liability Bill, the classes affected by it may.
perhaps, not prove to be as much hurt as they may fear. We
may take it as an axiom that any change in the law of em-
ployers and employed which does not affect the whole con-
tract between the. two parties will fail to produce the full
results looked for from it. The new liabilities which em-
ployers will incur under Mr. Dodson's Bill, will, as Mr. Lowe
has pointed out, be considered in wages. These will be re-
duced until the point has been reached which leaves
things practically as they were before. The whole body of
the working men will thus receive in wages and in compensa-
tions the same sum which they have been receiving in wages
alone. They might, therefore, have done for themselves by
their own combined action the very thing which the law is
now proposing to do for them. An insurance fund subscribed
among themselves would give them all they have been asking
for. The advantage of Mr. Dodson's Bill, if it works as we
have supposed, will-be that it will pa an indirect compulsion
on the men, and will, as it were, force them to subscribe to
an insurance fund whether they will or not. The amount
which will sooner or later be subtracted from their
wages must, therefore, be so regarded by them. They will
get it all back again in another form, and it will come just to
those who are in most need of it and who would have been
left unprovided for without it. The Bill may not improbably
produce this result in a more direct manner than we have
supposed. There are many companies and many large
private employers of labour who have already
established insurance funds against illness and ac-
cident, and have insisted on their workmen join-
ing them. It is likely under the new law that the
custom will be extended, and that the fulfilment of
Mr. Lowe's prediction will thus be directly as well as in-
directly brought about. If Mr. Dodson's Bill has this result,
it will be an extremely useful one. It will, in any case,
satisfy the more reasonable part of the working classes,
while it will entail on the employers no further liability
than that which they have always been morally, although
not legally, subject to, and which they have not seldom gone
beyond the law in assuming voluntarily and in loyally dis-
charging.