[ Acts No. 1868, June 18, 1908 ]
AN ACT CREATING THE BUREAU OF LABOR, UNDER THE DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE AND POLICE.
By authority of the United States, be it enacted by the Philippine Legislature, that:
(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, systematize, and submit from time to time reports to the Secretary of Commerce and Police, statistical data relative to the hours and wage of labor, the number of workers in each trade or occupation employed and unemployed, their place of birth, age, sex, civil slums, 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 the 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 ease: conditions and certainty of the payment of wages; the business of savings hanks 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 ;
(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 indemnity prescribed by law for injuries resulting from accidents when engaged in the performance of their duties.ℒαwρhi৷
(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.1aшphi1
(c) To organize in such towns in the Philippine Islands as it may deem necessary or advisable one or more five employment agencies.
Enacted, June 18, 1908.
