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Agnes L. Peterson.. Superintendent Bureau of Women and Children

LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL

Office of

Department of Labor and Industries.
St. Paul, Minn., January 1, 1917.

To the Honorable. Senators and Representatives of the Legislature of the State of Minnesota.

Gentlemen: In compliance with the laws of Minnesota creating the Department of Labor and Industries, I have the honor to transmit herewith the fifteenth biennal report of the work of this department.

Respectfully yours,

WILLIAM F. HOUK,
Commissioner.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This department's work has been materially assisted during recent years by the hearty co-operation received from other state departments and from municipal officials. I desire at this time to particularly acknowledge the generous assistance received during the past two years from the Railroad and Warehouse Commission, the State Board of Health, the State Fire Marshal, Attorney General, and Dairy and Food Commission; and from the municipal boards of health, building inspection departments, police departments and fire departments of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

The legal aid departments of the United Charities of Minneapolis and St. Paul have also responded heartily to our requests to aid workmen in securing redress of wrongs they had suffered.

WILLIAM F. HOUK,

Commissioner of Labor.

A

REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF LABOR.

One of the most important duties imposed by law upon this department is the duty of observing the operation of the labor laws of this state and making suggestions_to the legislature for the improvement and development of the laws. Before presenting the detailed report on our work we will therefore present our recommendations for the improvement of the state's labor laws.

We are making recommendations in this report which we consider of far-reaching importance. The recommendations have all been thoroughly discussed and threshed out by the members of the department and we believe that each of them would be a just, proper and practicable improvement in our labor laws. The recommendations involve amendments to the workmen's compensation act, the law creating this department, the accident report law, the law regulating private employment agencies, the health and sanitary laws of the state as affecting industrial camps and work places.

The Workmen's Compensation Act.

Three years of experience under the workmen's compensation act have revealed its virtues and its defects. It was frequently stated at the session of 1913, when the compensation act was enacted, that the new act was a radical departure from the old liability system, that it was acknowledged to be but a conservative step in the right direction, and that the act would constitute a beginning from which a permanent law framed along lines that experience would dictate could be built up. We believe that experience has now dictated. Radical modifications can and ought to be made in the law. Further experience under our present act will teach us little that is new. We know now as well as we will ever know what the defects of our law are. We may not yet be ready to work out a law that will permanently solve our compensation problem, but we can overcome the faults in our present law. This department is not so short-sighted that it believes that its recommendations, if adopted, would give us a perfectly satisfactory compensation law, but it believes that the changes advocated would work a long step in the right direction.

The department's recommendations for amendment to the compensation act are discussed in detail in the workmen's compensation report, and will simply be enumerated here. They are:

1. That the approval of settlements in undisputed cases be performed by a bureau of compensation in the department of labor instead of by the district courts.

2. That the bureau of compensation be empowered to formally arbitrate disputes, with the right reserved to the parties to refuse (within a definite number of days) to abide by the bureau's decision and to take the matter into court.

3. That a penalty be imposed upon employers who fail to get their settlements approved under section 22.

4. That the officers of the department of labor be given the power to witness signatures in compensation matters and that their witnessing have the same legal value as an attestation by a notary public.

5. That the rate of compensation be increased from 50 per cent of the wage to 66 2-3 per cent of the wage.

6. That the waiting period be reduced to one week.

7. That all persons totally and permanently disabled receive compensation for 550 weeks.

8. That all persons actually dependent receive the same percentage of the wage as a person non-fatally injured receives.

9. That all the medical care necessary to cure from the injury be provided by the employer.

10. That some provision be inserted to guarantee that every injured workman shall receive the compensation due him.

11. That section 25 be amended to compel state approval of all lump sum settlements.

12.

That section 26 be stricken out of the act.

13. That interest be charged the employer on compensation payments that are overdue.

14. That section 31a, the insurance section, be amended by striking out the language relative to filing notices of insurance with the commissioner of labor and that all compensation actions in court be filed directly against the employer.

15. That certain occupational diseases be covered by the compensation act.

If the amendments to the compensation act just enumerated were adopted it would be necessary to also amend chapter 518, G. L. 1913 (which is the law creating and organizing the department of labor), to add a bureau of workmen's compensation to the present organization of the department. At the present time the department consists of a bureau of women and children, a bureau of factory inspection, a bureau of employment offices, and a bureau of statistics. Our workmen's compensation division is at present organized within the statistical bureau and under the direction of the chief statistician. Our recommendation is that a separate bureau be created and given charge of the approval of settlements in addition to the work performed at present.

Employment Offices.

We also recommend that the law creating the department be amended to permit the department to co-operate with federal, municipal or private agencies in the organization of joint co-operative employment offices. The distribution of labor is partly an interstate service; to that extent it is a matter of national interest and concern. It is partly an intrastate matter, and to that extent it is a matter of state concern and jurisdiction. It is in some localities largely an intra-municipal affair, and in those localities the providing of employment exchanges is a natural function of the municipality. To illustrate: Labor is distributed from St. Paul, Minneapolis and Duluth into Wisconsin, Iowa, the two Dakotas and Montana. This is interstate distribution of labor. Labor is also sent in large quantities from these cities and from such smaller cities as Bemidji to the various portions of our own state. But much of the labor sent out by employment offices in these several cities is sent into the industries of the cities where the offices are located. This is an intramunicipal distribution of labor.

The federal government made overtures to this department during the past year to establish in Minnesota a system of employment offices under the joint management of the United States government, the state of Minnesota, and the city governments of Minneapolis, St. Paul and Duluth. A tentative plan for organizing such offices was prepared and an agreement reached for the division of the expense between the co-operating parties. The plan was laid before the attorney general's office for an opinion upon its legality and the department was advised that in the opinion of the attorney general the department could not at present legally enter into such a co-operative plan.

The department very earnestly recommends that chapter 518, G. L. 1913, be amended to permit the organization of co-operative public employment offices under the joint management and with joint sharing of expenses by the state, the federal government and municipalities or private organizations who may be admitted into the co-operative plan by the state and federal governments.

Accident Report Law.

The thirty-two states which have compensation laws and the federal government have formed an association called the International Asso

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