the varied body of law applied to such matters as employment, remuneration, conditions of work, trade unions, and industrial relations. In its most comprehensive sense the term includes social security and disability insurance as well. Unlike the laws of contract, tort, or property, the elements of labour law are somewhat less homogeneous than the rules governing a particular legal relationship. In addition to the individual contractual relationships growing out of the traditional employment situation, labour law deals with the statutory requirements and collective relationships that are increasingly important in mass-production societies, the legal relationships between organized economic interests and the state, and the various rights and obligations related to some types of social services.
Labour law has won recognition as a distinctive branch of the law within the academic legal community, but the extent to which it is recognized as a separate branch of legal practice varies widely depending partly on the extent to which there is a labour code or other distinctive body of labour legislation in the country concerned, partly on the extent to which there are separate labour courts or tribunals, and partly on the extent to which an influential group within the legal profession practice specifically as labour lawyers.
In the early phases of development the scope of labour law is often limited to the most developed and important industries, to undertakings above a certain size, and to wage earners; as a general rule, these limitations are gradually eliminated and the scope of the law extended to include handicrafts, rural industries and agriculture, small undertakings, office workers, and, in some countries, public employees. Thus a body of law originally intended for the protection of manual workers in industrial enterprises is gradually transformed into a broader body of legal principles and standards, which have basically two functions: the protection of the worker as the weaker party in the employment relationship, and the regulation of the relations between organized interest groups (industrial relations).
The general tendency in the modern development of labour law has been the strengthening of statutory requirements and collective contractual relations at the expense of rights and obligations created by individual employment relationships. How important these latter remain depends, of course, on the degree of personal freedom in the given society as well as the autonomy of both employer and worker allowed by the actual operation of the economy. In such matters as hours of work, health and safety conditions, or industrial relations, the statutory or collective elements may define most of the substance of the rights and obligations of the individual worker, while with respect to such things as the duration of his appointment, his level and extent of responsibility, or his place in the scale of remuneration, these elements may provide what is essentially a framework for individual agreement.
Aspects of this topic are discussed in the following places at Britannica.
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the varied body of law applied to such matters as employment, remuneration, conditions of work, trade unions, and industrial relations. In its most comprehensive sense the term includes social security and disability insurance as well. Unlike the laws of contract, tort, or property, the elements of labour law are somewhat less homogeneous than the rules governing a particular legal relationship. In addition to the individual contractual relationships growing out of the traditional employment situation, labour law deals with the statutory requirements and collective relationships that are increasingly important in mass-production societies, the legal relationships between organized economic interests and the state, and the various rights and obligations related to some types of social services.
Labour law has won recognition as a distinctive branch of the law within the academic legal community, but the extent to which it is recognized as a separate branch of legal practice varies widely depending partly on the extent to which there is a labour code or other distinctive body of labour legislation in the country concerned, partly on the extent to which there are separate labour courts or tribunals, and partly on the extent to which an influential group within the legal profession practice specifically as labour lawyers.
In the early phases of development the scope of labour law is often limited to the most developed and important industries, to undertakings above a certain size, and to wage earners; as a general rule, these limitations are gradually eliminated and the scope of the law extended to include handicrafts, rural industries and agriculture, small undertakings, office workers, and, in some countries, public employees. Thus a body of law originally intended for the protection of manual workers in industrial enterprises is gradually...
unpaid work on public projects that is required by law. Under the Roman Empire, certain classes of the population owed personal services to the state or to private proprietors—for example, labour in lieu of taxes for the upkeep of roads, bridges, and dikes; unpaid labour by coloni (tenant farmers) and freedmen on the estates of landed proprietors; and labour requisitioned for the maintenance of the postal systems of various regions. The feudal system of corvée—regular work that vassals owed their lord—developed from this Roman tradition. (The term corvée, meaning contribution, is now often used synonymously with statute labour.)
Similar labour obligations have existed in other parts of the world. In Japan the yō system of imposing compulsory labour on the farmers was incorporated in the tax system in the 7th century. The Egyptians used the corvée for centuries to obtain labour to remove the mud left at the bottom of the canals by the rising of the Nile River. In various times and places the corvée has been used when money payment did not provide sufficient labour for public projects. In wartime the corvée was sometimes used to augment regular troops in auxiliary capacities.
The corvée differs from forced labour in being a general and periodic short-term obligation; forced labour is usually prescribed for a long or indefinite period as a method of punishment or of discrimination.
Aspects of this topic are discussed in the following places at Britannica.
...commerce des grains (1770; “Letters on the Freedom of the Grain Trade”). He introduced new methods to the peasant region he administered, substituting a small tax in money for the corvée (unpaid work required of peasants for the upkeep of roads); compiling a land...
Aspects of this topic are discussed in the following places at Britannica.
...worker self-management in factories and institutions was adopted. This program, which sought to address problems inherent in the highly centralized Soviet model of socialism, was codified in the Law on Associated Labour of 1976. Each Yugoslav worker belonged to a Basic Organization of Associated Labour (BOAL) that was based on the precise role played by the worker in the production process....
in Serbia: The “Yugoslav road to socialism” )...president for life but after his death in 1980 vested authority in a collective presidency made up of representatives of the republics. In 1976 the self-management system was reconstructed under the Law on Associated Labour. In spite of its rhetoric of economic development, the law actually helped to maintain the power of an older and more conservative cohort of leading communists. These leaders...
Aspects of this topic are discussed in the following places at Britannica.
...the border, the Canadian movement did not experience a comparable surge of organization during the Great Depression. Only in February 1944 did the wartime administration of W.L. Mackenzie King issue Order in Council P.C. 1003, granting to Canadian workers collective-bargaining rights that American workers already enjoyed under the Wagner Act. The Canadian version, however, allowed for a greater...
Aspects of this topic are discussed in the following places at Britannica.
...until the establishment of a wire manufacturing plant in 1891. Other industries soon followed. A strike at a plant in 1937 led to a major U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1939 (National Labor Relations Board v. Fansteel Metallurgical Corporation) declaring sit-down strikes illegal. Today the city is a centre of pharmaceutical research and...
