I beg to move amendment 1:
In sub-section (2), lines 17-18, to delete paragraph (b) (iii).
This has to do with the problem of the casual labourer. To follow the section is not so easy, because we have first a definition of a workman, and in sub-section (2) we have a declaration, "each of the following persons shall be an excepted person for the purposes of this section," that is to say, a person to whom this Act will not apply. Paragraph (b) states that one of these excepted persons shall be a person whose employment is of a casual nature. Paragraph (iii) brings into the operation of the Act a casual labourer employed for the purpose of any work in or about the residence of his employer.
The decided cases have given a very wide interpretation to the word "about." It is rather difficult to discuss the effect of the word "about," but it seems to be very elastic, and a casual labourer "employed for the purposes of any work in or about the residence of his employer," might mean a labourer employed within a half mile of his employer's residence. The danger of bringing casual labourers of that class within the scope of this Bill is that in effect it will prevent such persons getting any work at all. In the Report prepared by the Departmental Committee in 1925 or 1926 "casual labourer" is referred to. "Most of the witnesses representing the employers," the report says, "appreciate the difficulties in including such cases while yet excluding the type of casual worker represented by a person engaged to carry luggage, say, to or from a railway station or elsewhere." They have been segregated by confining the application of the Bill to "in or about the residence of his employer." But that definition brings in a man employed to clean the windows, and it brings in a man who might earn 2/6 for sweeping off the dead leaves in the garden, or almost everybody of the type to whom one would give a job of work, out of charity rather than out of a desire to get a day's work done. It seems perfectly clear that if by giving a man a few shillings to sweep a chimney or clean up garden paths you are going to make yourself liable under the Workmen's Compensation Act, and for everything that the Workmen's Compensation Act will make you liable, you will not be very ready to employ such persons.