In the Progressive Era, workers’ compensation was the name for any payment workers received to cover the cost of treating workplace injuries and lost wages. Its provision varied according to different states, and it did not extend to occupational diseases and illnesses. At the turn of the century, workers who suffered physical injuries as a result of industrial accidents rarely received any form of payment from employers. To successfully win any claim, injured workers had to prove that the accident was the result of employer negligence, but the lack of evidence after the fact, combined with the power of large corporations, made this a difficult task. Similarly, if families of workers killed on the job wanted to claim compensation, they had to provide evidence that showed the culpability of the employer. Employers rarely had to accept liability for workplace injuries and deaths. Even if a worker or bereaved family successfully won compensation, the amount of money they received was fairly small and usually not enough to cover lost earnings and medical and/or funeral expenses. The compensation system in the United States differed from Great Britain, where the government had introduced comprehensive laws in 1897.
Despite the inadequacy of the compensation system, workers found alternative support mechanisms. In the MINING industry, the Western Federation of Miners (WFM), the largest mining union in the western states, provided care and support for sick and injured members. This included treatment at one of the union’s own hospitals and access to its health and disability programs. The WFM’s measures were more than just a system of support for the miners. They were also a strategy of opposition toward employers who evaded the responsibility of providing adequate health care and compensation. Aside from such programs, millions of other workers offset the costs of injury or death by joining life insurance programs.
Labor leaders and some lawyers, unwilling to accept the status quo, pressed for more extensive protective labor laws, such as an adequate worker compensation system, while state governments conducted studies with the intention of stemming the rising number of industrial deaths and injuries. Judges contributed to the debate over workers’ compensation by advocating a system of employer liability based on the law of torts. Developed by the judiciary after the Civil War, the law of torts stipulated that a person was entitled to compensation if he or she was the victim of an act of injustice.
The year 1907 marked a turning point in the struggle of those seeking better compensation laws. On Georgia Day, at the Jamestown Exposition, President Theodore RooSEVELT acknowledged that industrialization was exacting a growing toll in industrial injuries and diseases and proposed an overhaul of the nation’s work laws. Roosevelt asserted that all workers involved in industrial accidents should be entitled to compensation, so long as the injury was directly attributable to their work. He envisioned a compensation program financed by employers, which would eradicate the need for costly litigation and encourage employers to exercise more care. In an effort to set an example, Roosevelt’s government established a compensation program for federal employees in 1908. Roosevelt still believed, however, that the federal government should not interfere with the states’ rights to create their own compensation programs.
Corporate leaders did not completely disagree with Roosevelt’s sentiments. They recognized that a more comprehensive compensation system might help to stem escalating unrest among workers. This unrest was particularly acute in the STEEL INDUSTRY, where Andrew Carnegie’s vehemently antiunion stance deprived workers of the right to organize. Without a union to address their grievances, injured workers brought lawsuits, refused to work, or engaged in other methods of protest. Carnegie’s company, U. S. Steel, introduced a new compensation program in 1910 called the Voluntary Accident Relief Plan. Although the plan provided substantial compensation payments for injured workers and bereaved families, based on worker contributions, it assigned the blame for accidents to claimants and prevented employees from taking the company to court.
The growing visibility of workplace hazards across all sectors of industry led to the passage of new workers’ compensation laws. From 1911 to 1921, the majority of states passed such laws, which guaranteed monetary compensation for injured workers and the families of workers who died as a result of workplace accidents. Employers assumed responsibility for workers’ compensation, which motivated them to reduce industrial accident rates. Workplace fatalities and injuries meant monetary losses not only through payments to workers but also through higher insurance premiums. Workers who claimed compensation, however,
Automatically relinquished the right to sue their employer. Employers, in an effort to limit the workplace accident rate, created an organization called the National Safety Council in 1913.
There were limits to the compensation laws, as they did not cover workers who developed occupational diseases. Coal miners, for instance, were unable to obtain coverage for a lung disease called pneumoconiosis, otherwise known as black lung, which many of them contracted by spending prolonged periods of time in dust-filled underground mines. Similarly, workers who developed cancers as a result of direct exposure to chemicals found that employers fiercely contested responsibility for their illness. The most significant reason for this discrepancy in the laws was that it was almost impossible to prove the link between workplace hazards and long-term diseases.
The laws remained largely unchanged in the 1920s, although North Carolina and Missouri passed compensation laws during that decade, which left South Carolina, Arkansas, and Mississippi as the only states without a system of workers’ compensation. The workers’ compensation laws reflected the federal government’s reluctance to infringe on the rights of individual state governments, and in that sense, they were very much a product of their time.
See also National Civic Federation; occupational HEALTH and SAEETY; WoRKMEN’S CoMPENSAtion Act.
Further reading: Peter W. J. Bartrip, The Wo-unded Soldiers of Industry: Industrial Compensation Policy, 18331897 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); Daniel Berman, Death on the Job: Occupational Health and Safety Struggles in the United States (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978); Alan Derickson, Workers’ Health, Workers’ Democracy: The Western Miners’ Struggle, 1891-1925 (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988); John Fabian Witt, The Accidental Republic: Crippled Workingmen, Destitute Widows, and the Remaking of American Law (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004).
—Richard Fry
World History
