Poverty and Inequality
1944-10 1944 1940s 29 pages 21 (iii) The medical service provided is limited ; it does not include, for instance, specialist and consultant, hospital and maternity services. The patient is apt to receive rather scant attention from an extremely busy general practitioner. (6) Workmen's Co...
| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
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| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
London : C. W. Publishing Ltd.
October 1944
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/C86A5CA9-717B-45C5-86AF-D0378B704571 http://hdl.handle.net/10796/C1075B3D-FB2F-40AD-A83D-27C1DB629BB2 |
| Summary: | 1944-10
1944
1940s
29 pages
21 (iii) The medical service provided is limited ; it does not include, for instance, specialist and consultant, hospital and maternity services. The patient is apt to receive rather scant attention from an extremely busy general practitioner. (6) Workmen's Compensation. Workmen's Compensation dates back to the Act of 1897, with only slight modifications, and is full of anomalies. (1) The weekly rates are inadequate. For instance, for a man injured at his work and totally incapacitated, the basic rate of compensation is limited to half his former earnings, and in any event to not mote than 30/- a week. To this basic rate is added, since 1940, a supplementary allowance of 5/- a week for the first 13 weeks and 10/- thereafter. A further allowance of 3/- is paid in respect of each child of a male worker, but in no case must the additional allowances raise the total weekly sum paid to more than seven-eights of the man's former earnings. This is very hard on the skilled workman earning £7 or £8 a week who suddenly finds himself reduced to 35/-. The injustice is even greater in the case of low-paid workmen with several children ; for although the drop in income will not be so big, the loss of four or five shillings a week may reduce the standard of life of his young children to a point below subsistence level. For example, a man formerly earning £2 8s. would get the basic rate and supplementary allowance fo[r] £1 9s. 6d. No matter how many children he has, he cannot get more than seven-eighths of £2 8s., i.e. £2 2s., a sum over 6/- short of the amount which Sir William Beveridge judged to be the minimum necessary to support a wife and two children. (2) In case of a fatal accident occurring at work, a wife would become entitled to a lump sum not exceeding £700. Yet if her husband had been killed in a street accident, his wife, under the same plea of financial loss, might be awarded as much as £2,500. This differentiation is a relic of the cruel doctrine of common employment which, in the early days of Workmen's Compensation, debarred a workman from compensation if his injury resulted from the "ordinary risks of service," including negligence on the part of a fellow workman. (3) The system provided only for cash payments, and not for any medical services or surgical appliances ; nor does it undertake the rehabilitation of the injured workman. In general Workmen's Compensation is one of the weakest points in such social security as we have at present, and in this Britain lags behind the U.S.A., the Dominions and some European countries. (4) Workmen's Compensation is not state-administered, nor financed from a fund built up out of insurance contributions. The workman must sue his employer, and if the latter is insolvent
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| Physical Description: | TEXT |