13
-
with advances in the
ideas underlying that society. Trends have thus emerged towards eliminating the special treatment of employment injury and establishing a social security system on the basis of the principles of equity and universality. Such is the case, for example, of enactments of 1966 in the Netherlands and the legislation of New Zealand in 1972; both have repealed the old employment injury
benefits schemes.
23.
nev
The ending of the special treatment of employment injury will have to be brought about through the improvement of the protection provided for persons suffering from contingencies of non-occupational origin, because workers will naturally resist a reduction in the advantages they have obtained in their protection against employment injury. If it is accepted that the level of social security protection should depend only on the economic consequence of the contingency, not on its origin whether occupational or non-occupational, it would be pertinent to ask whether a country introducing a new social security scheme should adopt a system invoking the special treatment of employment injury whose origin to be rooted in the past of countries that started industrialisation over a hundred years ago. It may also be wondered whether it is really necessary to introduce discriminations that are difficult to justify once it is recognised that the basic aim of social security is, after all, to cover loss of income and to prevent and cure sickness and injury. It may also be recalled that as long ago as 1896 the Webbs considered in this connection that the "practical conclusion is to prescribed, by definite technical regulations, the precautions against accident and disease which experience and science prove to be necessary and to provide from public funds for the injured workman and his family, however the accident happened, according to the extent of their needs".1
seems
Unemployment
contingency covered by
social
24. The term "unemployment" as a
security implies little more than the condition of being without a job. A person who has never worked may said to be unemployed. A worker who has had a job but also has given it up voluntarily or for the reason of health, may be said to be without a job. He may also be unemployed solely because he makes no effort to obtain a job. Clearly, unemployment benefits could never be paid to every person who has no job. This would be financially impossible for any country and, moreover, there would be a risk of destroying the incentive to work of many persons, thereby seriously hampering the national economy.
25. Unemployment as a contingency dealt with by social security may be described as suspension of earnings of previously employed persons resulting from involuntary termination of employment relationship". The primary objective of an unemployment benefit scheme is therefore to protect unemployed persons against loss of income during the period from the termination of the employment relationship to their reintegration into a new gainful activity. Thus such a scheme is useful primarily with respect to workers who usually earn their living by regular employment and whose major problem, with respect to unemployment, is that of temporary interruption of work and wages. It should also be mentioned that the schene itself cannot be expected to do away with unemployment, while it helps to maintain the purchasing power of unemployed persons and thus helps to slow down the worsening of a general recession.
26. There has been the widely accepted idea that the essential aim of the legislation for insuring workers against unemployment should be the reabsorption of labour into employment and that the organisation of employment exchange should be regarded as indispensable to a system of insurance. As early as 1913, it was considered that unemployment insurance might even be called "employment insurance" just as in the United Kingdom the name "health insurance" had been adopted to describe insurance against sickness. (The term "insurance" is used here in the broader sense of the French assurance which implies not only the compensation of a realised risk but also the attempt to diminish the risk itself.2) This concept which extends the scope of the contingency covered by unemployment benefit schemes has led such schemes towards being regarded as part of the national manpower policy.
Co.
Sidney and Beatrice Webb: Industrial Democracy (London, Longmans, Green and 1920),
P. 387
2 ILO:
Unemployment insurance, Studies and Reports, Series C, No. 10, p. 60.
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