Czechoslovak national insurance : a contribution to the pattern of social security the Czechoslovak National insurance act.

  • Czechoslovakia.
Date:
[1948]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Czechoslovak national insurance : a contribution to the pattern of social security the Czechoslovak National insurance act. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    constructive work was done then in preparation of what was to be this national insurance scheme. When liberation at last came in 1945, experts recruited almost entirely from the war- time underground trade union movement, had their plans ready, had completed a careful analysis and criticism of the social insurance schemes which had in the meantime been introduced abroad, and had especially learned all the. right lessons from the Beveridge Plan and from the social insur- ance schemes of the USSR, New Zealand, Sweden and Great Britain. As a result of all this the progressive ideological equipment with which liberated Czechoslovakia approached the preparation of its national insurance scheme was in sharp contrast to the former conception of the significance and function of social insurance. It was especially the Revolutionary Trade Union Movement (ROH) which at that time contributed to the creation of the scheme in a truly revolutionary manner. In May 1945 already, the expert committee of the Trade Union Council began the preparations. It was to be more than two years, however, before the trade union movement, assisted by the left-wing political parties, succeeded in placing the National Insurance Bill on the list of concrete political tasks. Remnants of class interest and the “vis inertiae“ of the traditional liberalist conception of social insurance throughout that time obstructed this work, notwithstanding the fact that the national insurance plan had been a definite part of the so-called Košice Government Programme, the programme accepted in April 1945 by the first Government of the liberated country. Through the application of systematic and forceful pres- sure the rade Union Council succeeded in 1947 in bringing about the creation of a joint commission of the National Front (including all six political parties) and of the Trade Union Council. It was the task of that commission to carry out a political analysis of the material prepared by the trade unions and to present it to the Government as a political agreement. However, the commission did not conclude its task until the end of January 1948 and after endless struggles. There a2