A bill marking the initial step towards the establishment of state accident and sick benefit insurance is pending in the Legislature of Wisconsin. This is one of the first proposals of the kind submitted in any state. Its insurance features are modelled after the English act. The bill applies solely to vocational diseases. Both employer and employe are to contribute toward the premiums. Single employes earning less than $600 a year, who have someone dependent upon them, are eligible to protection under the provisions of the bill; no person may come under its terms who earns over $900. Persons earning $800 a year must have two dependent upon them, and those earning $900 annually must have four persons dependent upon them in order to come within the proposed statute.
Employers are to be allowed to deduct 1 per cent of the wages of employes and they must add to this sum one-half of 1 per cent of the pay roll, the entire sum to be paid into a state insurance fund. When ill, the employe is to receive 65 per cent of his wages during the period of his illness, but for not more than twenty-six consecutive weeks nor more than thirty-nine weeks in a single year. If the employe is sent to a hospital, his regular wages are to be paid to him weekly. The State Industrial Commission is empowered to enforce the provisions of the act in the event of its passage.
MUNICIPAL MINIMUM WAGE
A minimum wage of 25s. ($6.08) a week for all able-bodied men will henceforth rule, says Life and Labor, in the municipal service in Glasgow. It is now many years since the corporation of Glasgow acknowledged the principle of a minimum wage, the rate then introduced being 21s. ($5.11). Since that time improvements have brought the wages up to an average minimum of about 23s. ($5.60). so that the proposal for a minimum of 25s., which was carried in the town council, means an advance of about 2s. ($0.48 2–3) weekly to many of the lower-paid workmen. To give effect to the proposal an additional expenditure of $41,365 will, it is estimated, be involved.
The position in Manchester is better, from the workers’ point of view, than it will be in Glasgow even when the minimum weekly wage is raised to 25s. ($6.08). Seven years ago the Manchester city council raised the minimum wage to 25s. Early in the present year there was an agitation for an increase of 2s. ($0.48 2–3) a week in view of the increased cost of living. A special committee reported in favor of an advance to 26s. ($6.33) a week, and this the council agreed to. This sum is paid to all the laborers (as distinct from skilled workers in the several departments) throughout the city.
FULL CREW BILLS
An unusual publicity campaign on the part of railroads has resulted from the passage by the state Legislatures of the so-called Full Crew Bills in New Jersey and New York, regulating the number of employes on trains. In the New York newspapers for several days in succession the railroads used three-quarter page advertisements for a joint statement of their opposition. In this space they urged the governor to veto the bill, and the public to protest against its enactment. It is claimed by the railroads that the law will cost them $2,000,000 annually in the state of New York without bringing any increase in efficiency or safety. They point out that Governors Hughes and Dix both refused to approve similar measures on the ground that such questions should logically be decided by the Public Service Commission.
In their advertisements the railroads urged that the matter be left to the state Public Service Commissions, and promised to abide by their decisions.
The Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, which is urging such legislation all over the country, insists that it is necessary to promote safety. The Railroad Trainman, organ of the brotherhood says:
“Today our men are asking for legislation that is no more of a departure from the beaten path than the safety device legislation of twenty years ago was. They have tried to regulate the car limit of trains and the number of men to be employed on them through their contracts. They have failed in the first instance altogether and for the most part in the other. They realize that, operated as trains are, freight train service is often performed under unsafe conditions. Two men for an unlimited number of cars is the rule for the most part. Because of it there are freight trains running today averaging between fifty and one hundred and thirty-five cars and two men are in charge with the conductor.