Workers’ compensation

Before Bismarck's law, injured workers in most countries had almost no legal recourse. Three common-law defenses, known collectively as the unholy trinity, shielded employers from liability: contributory negligence, which held workers partially responsible for their own injuries; the fellow servant rule, which blamed coworkers; and assumption of risk, which argued that workers had accepted danger as a condition of employment. Filing a personal injury lawsuit required fees that most workers could not afford.

Bismarck's political calculation was straightforward. The Social Democrats were gaining seats in the Reichstag, and Bismarck had already banned their meetings and newspapers through the Anti-Socialist Law of 1878. He needed a positive complement to repression. As he told the Reichstag on March 15, 1884, the workers' compensation law was the complement to the Socialist Law: the government was suppressing socialist organizations while simultaneously delivering what those organizations had promised. The law passed on its third attempt on July 6, 1884.

The German system covered all private wage earners and apprentices with work-related injuries for up to thirteen weeks, after which totally disabled workers received continued benefits at sixty-seven percent of previous wages. The costs were borne entirely by employers. Austria adopted a similar law in 1887, Norway in 1894, Finland in 1895. Britain passed its Workmen's Compensation Act in 1897 after a four-year legislative battle. In the United States, Wisconsin enacted the first state workers' compensation law in 1911. Mississippi was the last state to follow, in 1948.