Several unions organized in recent years, availing themselves of the experience of the Cigar Makers and the Typographia, have inaugurated systems of sick benefits within a few years after their organization.  The Tobacco Workers’ Union introduced national sick benefits in 1896, one year after organization.  Similarly, the Boot and Shoe Workers’ Union at their fourth convention in June, 1899, established a national sick benefit.[134] This system became operative on January 1, 1900, and provided for members in good standing sick benefits of five dollars per week for not more than thirteen weeks in any one year.[135]

[Footnote 134:  Proceedings of the Second Convention, Boston, 1896 (Lynn, n.d.), pp. 42-46; Third Convention, Boston, 1897 (Lynn, n.d.); Fourth Convention, Rochester, 1899 (Lynn, n.d.).]

[Footnote 135:  Constitution, 1899, sec. 65.]

Besides the unions thus described, the Barbers, the Bakers, the Leather Workers on Horse Goods, and the Plumbers each pay five dollars per week, the last two for thirteen weeks in any one year, the Barbers for twenty weeks, and the Bakers for twenty-six weeks; the Piano and Organ Workers, five dollars per week for eight weeks; the Pattern Makers, four dollars per week for thirteen weeks; the Garment Workers, three dollars per week to women and four dollars per week to men for eight weeks in any one year, or twelve weeks in two years, or fifteen weeks in three years, or eighteen weeks in four years.

In several other important unions the question of establishing a national system of sick benefits has been much discussed.  The following unions have given the greatest amount of attention to the subject:  the Typographical Union, the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, the Painters, the Wood Workers, and the Machinists.  In each of these many of the subordinate unions pay a sick benefit.  Among the Carpenters the payment of sick relief has always been an activity of the subordinate unions.[136] Although the Brotherhood has up to the present left the management of the sick benefit to the local unions, the national officials have recommended on several occasions that the benefit should be nationalized.  In 1890 General Secretary-Treasurer M’Guire pointed out that under the system of local benefits travelling members were frequently not entitled to sick benefits.[137] At the ninth and tenth annual conventions, in 1896 and 1898, the subject of unifying the system was discussed at length.[138] Many local unions had bankrupted themselves by paying large sick benefits.  The convention of 1898 submitted to the referendum a plan for a national system.  The defeat of this proposal was chiefly due to the feeling that it was inadvisable to pay the same amount in small towns and cities where wages were low as in the larger cities.

[Footnote 136:  The Society of Carpenters, founded at Halifax, Nova Scotia, February 18, 1798, provided in its constitution that all members of twelve months’ standing, if sick and confined to bed, should receive two shillings per week; if able to walk about but unable to work, they should receive such a sum as the Society thought wise (Constitution, 1798, [Ms.]).]