An Act Creating the Bureau of Labor, under the Department of Commerce and Police

June 18, 1908

ACT NO. 1868

AN ACT CREATING THE BUREAU OF LABOR, UNDER THE DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE AND POLICE

SECTION 1. There is hereby established in the Department of Commerce and Police a bureau which shall be known as the Bureau of Labor.

SECTION 2. The purpose of this bureau shall be:

(a) To see to the proper enforcement of all existing laws and those which shall be enacted hereafter with reference to labor and capital in the Philippine Islands, and to promote the enactment of all other legislation which shall tend to establish the material, social, intellectual, and moral improvement of workers;

(b) To acquire, collect, compile, systemize, and submit from time to time reports to the Secretary of Commerce and Police, statistical data relative to the hours and wages of labor, the number of workers in each trade or occupation employed and unemployed, their place of birth, age, sex, civil status, and moral and mental culture; the estimated number of families of married workers, houses rented by them, and annual rental; property owned by them, the value of such property; the cost of living, the amount of labor required, the estimated number of persons dependent on their daily wages, the probable changes in all the persons employed, the condition of shops, factories, railways, tramways, industrial and commercial establishments, and all other places or temples of labor, whether public or private, including the penal institutions of these Islands, with respect to the safety of life and health of workers; the means adopted to avoid accidents or make reparation therefor; the number of accidents which take place, their causes and the action taken in each case; conditions and certainty of the payment of wages; the business of savings banks with the working classes; corporations, strikes, suspensions of work, and other labor difficulties, their causes and the remedies adopted in each case; mutual benefit associations, workers' insurance societies, associations for the collection of statistics and cooperative production, and other labor organizations, and their effects on labor and capital; private employment, complaint, defense, and consultation agencies for laborers; their conditions and effects and other matters relative to the commercial, industrial, social, educational, moral, and sanitary condition of the working classes and the permanent prosperity of the various industries of the Islands; and in the case of laborers born in foreign countries, the date of their arrival and the length of their stay in these islands; CAIHTE

(c) To inspect all shops, factories, railways, tramways, vessels, industrial and commercial establishments, and all other places or centers of labor, whether public or private, and to take the proper legal steps to prevent the exposure of the health or lives of laborers, and to aid and assist by all proper legal means laborers and workers in securing just compensation for their labor, and the indemnity prescribed by law for injuries resulting from accidents when engaged in the performance of their duties.

(d) To secure the settlement of differences between employer and laborer and to avert strikes and lockouts by inducing all parties to the controversy to submit their differences to arbitration.

(e) To organize in such towns in the Philippine Islands as it may deem necessary or advisable one or more free employment agencies.

SECTION 3. By and with the approval of the Governor-General, the Director of Labor shall have power to administer oaths, to issue subpoenas and subpoenas duces tecum, and to receive and take affidavits and the testimony of witnesses and experts, when making investigations authorized by this Act.

SECTION 4. The Bureau of Labor shall have one chief and one assistant chief, who shall be appointed by the Governor-General, by and with the consent of the Philippine Commission, and who shall be known respectively as the Director of Labor and the Assistant Director of Labor. The Director of Labor shall exercise the powers and perform the duties herein imposed upon the Bureau of Labor. The Assistant Director of Labor shall perform the duties of the Director of Labor during the absence or disability of the latter and such other duties as may be required of him by the Director of Labor. The salary of the Director of Labor shall be seven thousand pesos and that of the Assistant Director of Labor four thousand pesos per annum. DETACa

SECTION 5. This Act shall take effect on its passage.

ENACTED, June 18, 1908. HEITAD