Trade Union Advisory Medical Officers
1920 1920 1920s 9 pages Individual Trade Unions - and their medical aspects. I. Organisational: Many Trade Unions, such as the Dockers, the Transport Workers, the Engineering groups, and the Miners' Federation, have a large casualty list. For these casualities, it is necessary not only to o...
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| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
| Language: | English English |
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[1920?]
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/41A95B85-B66F-4867-8AD9-E0A610253D88 http://hdl.handle.net/10796/43D1E032-D6D8-4C48-B1C0-F2B94F57D8DB |
| Summary: | 1920
1920
1920s
9 pages
Individual Trade Unions - and their medical aspects. I. Organisational: Many Trade Unions, such as the Dockers, the Transport Workers, the Engineering groups, and the Miners' Federation, have a large casualty list. For these casualities, it is necessary not only to obtain surgical treatment, but to fight for compensation under the Workman's Compensation Acts for adequate compensation. The medical and surgical witnesses, as is well known to trade union officials, are very frequently not on the side of the claimantd [claimants] or their organisation or political movement, and often, if sub-paenoed [subpoenaed] by the opposing side, actively hostile. The general charge of dissatisfaction with all the medical arrangements as they haphazardly are allowed to exist at present is not being made, but it is being respectfully submitted that better results could be obtained by better organisation of the medical arrangements from the Trade Union side. The Trade Union Movement has never considered the advisability of an appointment of a Trade Union medical referee or advisory medical officer, either (a) to examine these cases individually himself (and the surgical experience involved will be valuable to any individual or set of medical officers, and his advice will grow more authorative and be more widely recognised as his experience extends) and report on them in writing, or to give evidence in courts, or (b) to advise on the suitable specialist to whom the case should be transferred for an impartial opinion on the aspects of the case. It will be recognised that one such appointment could not cover the ground of the whole of Great Britain. Any scheme has therefore necessarily to be elastic, and be capable of having various details and subsidiary schemes fitted into it later on, as the idea develops or conditions demand. The first appointment ought therefore to be advisory, to cover the whole country or a certain region, with the clinical work only to be done in a certain locality. Such an advisory position will be found ultimately (if the whole Trade Union movement be united and amalgamated for this particular purpose) to take up all the time of one individual - the Central Advisory Medical Officer - but as a start it is suggested that one or more large Trade Unions should seriously consider the advisability of such an appointment, either separately or in combination with another Union, the medical officer's function being confined at first not solely to advisory duties, but to actual surgical or medical work as a referee. And payment could be made and the idea extended according as the Unions involved find that they are deriving benefit from the scheme, and from the advice and work of the medical officer appointed. The scheme, it is again emphasised, should be so outlined and arranged as to be elastic. Other medical officers may be gradually drafted into appropriate positions, and with a gradual separation of the two functions of Advisory Officers, and Medical and surgical referees, and so towards the control of both by the Medical section of the general staff of the Labour movement. The officers appointed should be known to be in harmony with the Labour Movement. It is essential too for the reason that the various memoranda on this subject should as far as practicable be treated as confidential. Should such a scheme be announced prematurely, there would probably be a rush of applicants for the post or posts who would be applying not because of sympathy with Labour, but purely because of the status, pay, value of experience and prospects such an appointment would hold. There might be a temptation in the consideration of such an appointment to adopt a bourgeois attitude of appointing as medical officer one who has a string of diplomas and degrees, on the ground that the individual in question must have had a certain amount of the experience necessary. Such a course would be to penalise those who had devoted to a study of the Labour movement and Labour questions the time which could have been devoted, like the selfishness of the other applicants, to the
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| Physical Description: | TEXT |