As all of us have lived in a society with workers’ comp our whole lives, we may think of it as always having existed. The truth of the matter, though, is that modern-day workers compensation did not start happening until 1884.
In Germany, Otto von Bismarck was leading the Imperial Senate of the German Empire in the 1880s. Bismarck had wanted to pass a bill insuring workers for cases of accidents on the job. Initially, Bismarck suggested that the Imperial Government pay part of the Accident Insurance, but the Senate refused to pass a bill with that included.
Bismarck had intended – in part to prevent workers from going to further-left parties like the Social Democrats – to show that the government wanted to lessen the suffering of workers, and protect these workers in the case of anything going wrong at work.
Since the Senate refused to let the government pay for it, Bismarck’s administration instead had the employers in the German Empire underwrite the entirety of the accident insurance. The corporations got together in an organization which had insurance offices at the Imperial capital, and this organization administered the coverage. The program paid for all medical treatment, and if the worker suffered full disability resulting from the accident, the program paid a pension of up to 66% of the worker’s earned wages.
The Accident Insurances Act of 1884 passed – but only after three unsuccessful bills had been denied by the Senate. Two years later, in 1886, the program grew to cover farmers and other agriculture professionals as well.
The United States did not begin accepting individual states’ workers’ compensation statues until 1911, when Wisconsin created a law that the courts did not overturn. Within the decade that followed, 42 states added their own workers’ comp laws. For Cincinnati, workers comp law began with Ohio’s State Insurance Fund in 1912.