Labour law

“ The obvious answer and the only answer is, that there exists in society certain forces, certain regulations, known under the name of “law and order,” which tell this man distinctly that, unless he is able to sell his labour-power to an employer in accordance with the recognised rules, he must remain poor and destitute; he must keep where he is ”

“ As regards shops and offices, the labour laws are: one which protects apprentices against overwork (law of 22nd February 1851) , one (law of 29th December 1900) which requires that seats shall be provided for women and girls employed in retail sale of articles, and a decree of the 28th of July 1904 defining in detail conditions of hygiene in dormitories for workmen and shop assistants. ”

“ State organs, institutions and public organizations as well as labourers who form a labour contract relationship therewith shall be bound by this Law.
Article 3 Labourers shall have equal right to employment and choice of occupation, the right to remuneration for labour, to rest and vacations, to protection of occupational safety and health, to training in vocational skills, to social insurance and welfare, to submission of labour disputes for settlement and other rights relating to labour stipulated by law. ”

“ The injustice of this application of the common-law rule has been recognized, but the only way to avoid the difficulty was through specific legislation providing that under such conditions as those related, and similar ones, the doctrine of co-employment should not apply, and that the workman should have the same right to recover damages as a passenger upon a railway train. ”

“ The first agitation for legislation of this character occurred in England in 1880. A number of states in the Union have now enacted statutes fixing the liability of employers under certain conditions and relieving the employé from the application of the common-law rule. Where the employé himself is contributory to the injuries resulting from an accident he cannot recover, nor can he recover in some cases where he knows of the danger from the defects of tools or implements employed by him. ”

“ In comparing legislation affecting factories, mines, shops and truck in the chief industrial countries of the continent with that of Great Britain, it is essential to a just view that inquiry should be extended beyond the codes themselves to the general social order and system of law and administration in each country. Further, special comparison of the definitions and the sanctions of each industrial code must be recognized as necessary, for these vary in all. ”

“ But law or custom may interfere to limit competition. If apprentice laws, or the regulations of corporate bodies, make the access to a particular employment slow, costly, or difficult, the wages of that employment may be kept much above their natural proportion to the wages of common labour. ”

“ Even in such a severe crisis of unemployment as that of 1879-81, when the number of men thrown out of work was probably greater than at any date from 1841 down to the present day, the Central Authority held to its view of what the labour test should be. ”

“ In many states the hours of labour have been limited by law in occupations in which, on account of their dangerous or insanitary character, the health of the employés would be jeopardized by long hours of labour, or in which the fatigue occasioned by long hours would endanger the lives of the employés or of the public. The occupations for which such special legislation has been enacted are those of employés on steam and street railways, in mines and other underground workings, smelting and refining works, bakeries and cotton and woollen mills. ”

“ The law of Sunday rest dated the 17th of July 1905, however, applies to labour generally in all industrial and commercial undertakings except transport and fisheries, with certain regulated exceptions for (a) cases of breakdown or urgency due to force majeure, (b) certain repairs and cleaning, (c) perishable materials, (d) retail food supply. Young workers are excluded from the exceptions. The absolute prohibitions of employment are: for children under 12 years in any industry, manufacturing or mining or transport, and for women and girls under 21 years below the surface in working of mines. ”

“ The right of combination and peaceable assembly on the part of employés is recognized at common law throughout the United States. Organizations of working-men formed for their mutual benefit, protection and improvement, such as for endeavouring to secure higher wages, Labour organizations. shorter hours of labour or better working conditions, are nowhere regarded as unlawful. ”

“ Hitherto, male labour has only had practically a negative meaning in protective law, it has been used in the sense of the unprotected labour of adult men. The demand for a maximum working day for all male labourers—at least in factories—and the concession of this demand have given a positive signification to the term male labour, as affected by protective legislation. ”

“ By a special law of 1888 children and young persons under 18 years are excluded from employment as pedlars, hawkers or in circuses, except by their parents, and then only if they have attained 14 years. Abuses of the truck system have, since 1887, been regulated with care. The chief objects of the law of 1887 were to secure payment in full to all workers, other than those in agriculture or domestic service, of wages in legal tender, to prohibit payment of wages in public-houses, and to secure prompt payment of wages. ”

“ Although the standpoint of the Factory Act and Truck Act in force at the beginning of the 20th century as regards hours of labour or regulation of fines deducted from wages is completely reversed, yet the difference is not great between the average length of hours of labour permissible under the present law for women and those hours imposed upon the adult labourer in Elizabeth’s statute. ”

“ The right of workers to strike, and of employers to stop work, is recognised, in conformity with regulations which will be established by law for the exercise of both rights.
72. The system of collective labour contracts, which employers and workers are compelled to execute, shall be regulated by law. ”

“ So far as the law has altered in character, it has done so chiefly by gradual development of certain sanitary features, originally subordinate, and by strengthening provision for security against accidents and not by retreat from its earlier aims. At the same time a basis for possible new developments can be seen in the protection of “outworkers” as well as factory workers against fraudulent or defective particulars of piece-work rates of wages. ”

“ Article 88 Trade unions at various levels shall, in accordance with the law, safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of labourers, and supervise the implementation of laws, rules and regulations on labour by the employing units.
Any organizations or individuals shall have the right to expose and accuse any acts that violate the law, rules and regulations on labour. ”

“ The importance of this act lay in its provision for skilled inspection and thus for enforcement of the law by an independent body of men unconnected with the locality in which the manufactures lay, whose specialization in their work enabled them to acquire information needed for further development of legislation for protection of labour. ”

“ According to the Statutes, Orders, and Circulars now promulgated by the Central Authority, the able-bodied (not being wayfarers) may be relieved in three main ways, among which the local authority over a large part of England and Wales is left free choice, viz.:— (a) maintenance in the workhouse, (b) outdoor relief with a labour test, and (c) [261] employment for wages [839] by the distress committee. ”

“ The exceptions may be applied, generally, only to workers over 14 years, but in mines, by royal decree, boys over 12 years may be employed from 4 a.m. The law of 1889 fixes only a maximum of 12 hours of effective work, to be interrupted by pauses for rest of not less than 11/2 hours, empowering the king by decree to formulate more precise limits suited to the special circumstances of individual industries. ”

“ The code of labour laws of the present time is almost entirely the result of the industrial revolution during the latter part of the 18th century, under which the domestic or hand-labour system was displaced through the introduction of power machinery. ”

“ By far the most important recent amendment socially is the law regulating child-labour, dated the 30th of March 1903, which relates to establishments having industrial character in the sense of the Industrial Code. ”

“ During the very first storms of the revolution, the French bourgeoisie dared to take away from the workers the right of association but just acquired. By a decree of June 14, 1791, they declared all coalition of the workers as "an attempt against liberty and the declaration of the rights of man," punishable by a fine of 500 livres, together with deprivation of the rights of an active citizen for one year. [6] This law which, by means of State compulsion, confined the struggle between capital and labour within limits comfortable for capital, has outlived revolutions and changes of dynasties. ”

“ The State has long afforded regular administrative and judicial protection to the work of industrial wage-service, and has even interfered in a special manner in the case of children, young men, young women and adult women; and for still longer in the case of adult men, by affording protection in the way of limitation of employment, truck protection and protection in occupation, and by affording protection of contract through the Industrial Regulations, applied to non-factory as well as to factory labour. ”

“ Turning back to still earlier times, legislation—whatever its source or authority—must clearly be devoted to aims very different from modern aims in regulating labour, when it arose before the labourer, as a man dependent on an “employer” for the means of doing work, had appeared, and when migratory labour was almost unknown through the serfdom of part of the population and the special status secured in towns to the artisan. ”

“ And indeed we must draw the limit still closer, and apply the word only to the relations between certain defined wage-earners and certain defined employers. Measures which are designed to protect the entire labouring class or the whole of industry, do not, strictly speaking, belong to the category of Labour Protection. ”

“ Under the general head of Labour Legislation all American statute laws regulating labour, its conditions, and the relation of employer and employé must be classed. It includes what is properly known as factory legislation. Labour legislation belongs to the latter half of the 19th century, so far History. as the United States is concerned. Like England in the far past, the Americans in colonial days undertook to regulate wages and prices, and later the employment of apprentices. ”

“ This is just what I have thought when I have seen slaves at work—they seem to go through the motions of labour without putting strength into them. They keep their powers in reserve for their own use at night, perhaps. ”

“ Labor.—Arbitration should take the place of strikes and other injurious methods of settling labor disputes. The letting of convict labor to contractors should be prohibited, the contract system be abolished in public works, the hours of labor in industrial establishments be reduced, commensurate with the increased production by labor-saving machinery, employés protected from bodily injury, equal pay for equal work for both sexes, and labor, agricultural, and co-operative associations be fostered and encouraged by law. ”

“ Now, labour being in itself a pain, and man being naturally inclined to avoid pain, it follows, and history proves it, that wherever plunder is less burdensome than labour, it prevails; and neither religion nor morality can, in this case, prevent it from prevailing.
When does plunder cease, then? When it becomes less burdensome and more dangerous than labour. It is very evident that the proper aim of law is to oppose the powerful obstacle of collective force to this fatal tendency; that all its measures should be in favour of property, and against plunder. ”

“ Similar tendencies may be observed in other departments of industrial legislation, such as the further recognition of the right of workmen to combine, the regulation of the conditions of employment, especially in such organized employments as mines and factories, the restrictions on the employment of women and children, the requirement of precautions against risk to health and life, the formation of Government pension funds against sickness and old age, and the provisions for the settlement of labour disputes. ”

“ For instance, Labour Protection does not include all judicial and administrative protection extended by the State to the wage-labourer, but only such special or extraordinary protection as is directed against the dangers arising from service relations, and is administered through special, extraordinary organs, judicial, legislative and representative. This special protection has become necessary through the development of the factory system with its merciless exploitation of wage-labour, and through the weakening of the patriarchal relations in workshops and in handicrafts. ”

“ The possible removal—or at least control and regulation—of the middleman forms one fundamental problem—hitherto unsolved—of labour protection in the sphere of household industry, and the protection of industrial home-workers against their parents and against each other forms another. ”