Labour law -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia https://www.britannica.

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Labour law
Labour law, the varied body of law applied
TABLE OF CONTENTS
to such matters as employment,
remuneration, conditions of work, trade Introduction

unions, and industrial relations. In its most Factors in labour law

comprehensive sense, the term includes Historical development of labour law

social security and disability insurance as Elements of labour law

The rules of different systems

well. Unlike the laws of contract, tort, or
Unifying tendencies
property, the elements of labour law are
Contemporary tendencies
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

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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).

Factors in labour law

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.

Historical development of labour law

The origins of labour law can be traced back to the remote past and the most varied parts
of the world. While European writers often attach importance to the guilds and
apprenticeship systems of the medieval world, some Asian scholars have identified
labour standards as far back as the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi (18th century BCE)
and the rules for labour-management relations in the Hindu Laws of Manu (Manu-smriti;
c. 100 CE); Latin American authors point to the Laws of the Indies promulgated by Spain
in the 17th century for its New World territories. None of these can be regarded as more
than anticipations, with only limited influence on subsequent developments. Labour law
as it is known today is essentially the child of successive industrial revolutions from the
18th century onward. It became necessary when customary restraints and the intimacy of
employment relationships in small communities ceased to provide adequate protection
against the abuses incidental to new forms of mining and manufacture on a rapidly
increasing scale at precisely the time when the 18th-century Enlightenment, the French

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Revolution, and the political forces that they set in motion were creating the elements of
the modern social conscience. It developed rather slowly, chiefly in the more
industrialized countries of western Europe, during the 19th century and attained its
present importance, relative maturity, and worldwide acceptance only during the 20th
century.

The first landmark of modern labour law was the


Code of Hammurabi
Diorite stela inscribed with the Code of
Hammurabi, 18th century
British Health and Morals of Apprentices Act of
1802, sponsored by the elder Sir Robert Peel.
Similar legislation for the protection of the young
was adopted in Zürich in 1815 and in France in
1841. By 1848 the first legal limitation of the
working hours of adults was adopted by the

BCE Landsgemeinde (citizens’ assembly) of the Swiss

. canton of Glarus. Sickness insurance and workers’
Art Media/Heritage-Images/age fotostock
compensation were pioneered by Germany in 1883
and 1884, and compulsory arbitration in industrial disputes was introduced in New
Zealand in the 1890s. The progress of labour legislation outside western Europe,
Australia, and New Zealand was slow until after World War I. The more-industrialized
states of the United States began to enact such legislation toward the end of the 19th
century, but the bulk of the present labour legislation of the United States was not
adopted until after the Great Depression of the 1930s. There was virtually no labour
legislation in Russia prior to the October Revolution of 1917. In India children between
the ages of 7 and 12 were limited to nine hours of work per day in 1881 and adult males
in textile mills to 10 hours per day in 1911, but the first major advance was the
amendment of the Factory Act in 1922 to give effect to conventions adopted at the first
session of the International Labour Conference at Washington, D.C., in 1919. In Japan
rudimentary regulations on work in mines were introduced in 1890, but a proposed
factory act was controversial for 30 years before it was adopted in 1911, and the decisive
step was the revision of this act in 1923 to give effect to the Washington Convention on
hours of work in industry. Labour legislation in Latin America began in Argentina in the
early years of the century and received a powerful impetus from the Mexican

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Revolution, which ended in 1917, but, as in North America, the trend became general
only with the impact of the Great Depression. In Africa the progress of labour legislation
became significant only from the 1940s onward.

The legal recognition of the right of association for trade union purposes has a
distinctive history. There is no other aspect of labour law in which successive phases of
progress and regression have been more decisively influenced by political changes and
considerations. The legal prohibition of such association was repealed in the United
Kingdom in 1824 and in France in 1884; there have been many subsequent changes in
the law and may well be further changes, but these have related to matters of detail
rather than to fundamental principles. In the United States freedom of association for
trade union purposes remained precarious and subject to the unpredictable scope of the
labour injunction, by means of which the courts helped restrain trade union activity until
the 1930s. The breakthrough for trade unionism and collective bargaining was achieved
by the National Labor Relations Act (the Wagner Act) of 1935. In many other countries
the record of progress and regression with respect to freedom of association falls into
clearly distinguished periods separated by decisive political changes. This has certainly
been the case with Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, and much of eastern Europe; there have
been many illustrations of it, and there may well be more in the developing world.

Labour codes or other forms of comprehensive labour legislation and ministries of

labour were not introduced until the 20th century. The first labour code (which, like
many of its successors, was a consolidation rather than a codification) was projected in
France in 1901 and promulgated in stages from 1910 to 1927. Among the more
advanced formulations affecting the general condition of labour were the Mexican
Constitution of 1917 and the Weimar Constitution of Germany of 1919, both of which
gave constitutional status to certain general principles of social policy regarding
economic rights. Provisions of this kind have become increasingly common and are now
widespread in all parts of the world.

Departments or ministries of labour responsible for the effective administration of labour

legislation and for promoting its future development were established in Canada in 1900,
in France in 1906, in the United States in 1913, in the United Kingdom in 1916, and in

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Germany in 1918. They became general in Europe and were established in India and
Japan during the following years and became common in Latin America in the 1930s. A
labour office was established in Egypt in 1930, but only in the 1940s and ’50s did
similar arrangements begin to take root elsewhere in Asia and Africa. Under differing
political circumstances there continue, of course, to be wide variations in the authority
and effectiveness of such administrative machinery.

Elements of labour law

The basic subject matter of labour law can be considered under nine broad heads:
employment; individual employment relationships; wages and remuneration; conditions
of work; health, safety, and welfare; social security; trade unions and industrial relations;
the administration of labour law; and special provisions for particular occupational or
other groups.

Employment

Employment considered as a basic concept and category of labour law is a relatively

recent development. Prior to the Great Depression and World War II the emphasis was
upon the prevention or reduction of excessive unemployment rather than upon long-term
employment policy as part of a comprehensive scheme to promote economic stability
and growth. The new approach, arising from changes in political outlook and
contemporary economic thought, has increasingly found expression in legal provisions
that establish the creation of employment opportunities as a general objective of policy.
To this end, legislation has established the necessary legal framework for the forecasting
of labour needs and availability and the provision of employment services including
placement, recruitment, vocational training, and apprenticeship. Freedom from forced
labour, equality of treatment in employment and occupation, and unemployment benefits
may, in a broad sense, be regarded as part of the same general subject.

Individual employment relations

The making, modification, and termination of individual employment relations and the
resulting obligations for the parties form a second branch of labour law. It may also

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involve certain aspects of promotion, transfer, and dismissal procedures and

compensation. Historically speaking, the law on these matters was at one time described
as the law of master and servant. It implied a contractual relation in which one party
agreed to be under the control of the other in the sense that the servant was bound to
obey orders not only as to the work that he would execute but also as to the details of the
work and the manner of its execution. In return, the master had to pay a wage and grant
certain minimum conditions for the protection of the worker. As the law developed, the
implied terms and statutory incidents attached to this relationship concerning such
matters as termination of employment, dismissal procedures and compensation,
minimum wages, conditions of work, and social security rights began to limit freedom of
contract. The individual employment relationship continues, however, to be the subject
matter of labour law to which general legal principles, as opposed to statutes and
collective agreements, apply. Legally speaking, the individual contract of employment
plays a more important role in the civil-law countries than in common-law countries.

Wages and remuneration

The substantive law on wages and remuneration covers such elements as forms and
methods of payment, the protection of wages against unlawful deductions and other
abuses, minimum wage arrangements, the determination of wages, fringe benefits, and,
in highly sophisticated economies, incomes policies. The concept of wage regulation as a
restraint upon extreme social evils has gradually been superseded by wage policies as
deliberate instruments of positive management designed to promote economic stability
and growth.

Legal requirements concerning the forms of wages and methods of wage payment deal
with such matters as the proper notification of wage conditions, the payment of wages in
legal tender or by check, the limitation and proper valuation of payments in kind, the
freedom of the worker to dispose of his wages, regularity in wage payments, the
treatment of wages as a privileged, or secured, debt, and restrictions upon the attachment
or assignment of wages.

Minimum-wage regulation takes varied forms; it may, following the pattern originally

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set by the British Trades Boards Acts from 1909 onward, provide for wages councils or
similar bodies to fix wages in trades that have no arrangements for collective agreements
and where wages are exceptionally low; it may consist, as in Australia and New Zealand,
essentially of arbitration arrangements; or it may, as in the United States under the Fair
Labor Standards acts, provide a statutory rate or criteria for determining such a rate.
Statutory provisions and collective agreements for determining wages may embrace such
varied matters as skill differentials, the elimination of race and sex differentials, payment
according to results and the relationship of wages to productivity, and wage guarantees
for agreed periods of time. Fringe benefits, such as bonuses payable in varying
contingencies, are typically a matter for collective agreements. Incomes policies remain
the subject of much controversy. Their general purpose, sometimes embodied in
legislation and sometimes expressed in collective agreements or statements of
government policy, is to restrain inflationary pressures resulting from wage increases
unrelated to increased productivity and to do this in a manner that promotes a fairer
distribution of income.

Conditions of work

The conditions of work involve hours, rest periods, and vacations; the prohibition of
child labour and regulation of the employment of young persons; and special provisions
concerning the employment of women. This part of the law originated in legislation for
the protection of children, young persons, and women against the worst evils of the
Industrial Revolution. It originally dealt particularly with such matters as admission to
employment, night work, and excessive hours, but the elements of its content and their
relative importance were wholly transformed during the 20th century.

As economic and educational progress and


Lewis W. Hine: photograph of an
overseer and child workers in the
Yazoo City Yarn Mills
changed social habits limited child labour in the
industrialized countries and increasingly in the
modernized sectors of developing economies, the
special concern of labour law with regard to the
young shifted to such areas as vocational guidance
and training, career planning and advancement,

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Overseer supervising a girl (about 13

and medical protection.
years old) operating a bobbin-winding
machine in the Yazoo City Yarn Mills,
Mississippi, photograph by Lewis W. As employment opportunities for women became
Hine, 1911; in the Library of Congress,
more varied and responsible, there was a similar
Washington, D.C.
National Child Labor Committee shift in emphasis from protective legislation
collection, Library of Congress, Prints
and Photographs Division (LC-DIG- —which came to be regarded as discriminatory,
nclc-02093)
since it tended to limit such opportunities—to legal
guarantees of equal pay and equal employment,
coupled with adequate maternity protection and the provision of facilities to enable
women with family responsibilities to continue to be employed. In the late 20th and
early 21st centuries, similar, though less comprehensive, accommodations to male
employees (e.g., the provision of paid or unpaid paternity leave) were increasingly
common.

Whereas previously any statutory limitation of the hours of work of adult males was
regarded as being highly questionable, except in mines where it had been introduced on
safety grounds, in a society of much increased leisure it has now become a general
practice to fix maximum hours of work by statute or collective agreement. In many
countries the eight-hour day has been superseded by the 40-hour week as the statutory
maximum for a wide range of occupations, and collective agreements providing for
substantially shorter working hours are not uncommon. The details of hours regulation,
whether by statute or collective agreement, include such matters as exceptions and
adjustments necessary for continuous shift working. In addition, such regulations cover
the extensions permitted for preparatory, complementary, and intermittent work; the
special rules for force majeure (work of absolute necessity), accident, maintenance, and
repair work; and the limitation, authorization, and remuneration of overtime.

The principle of resting one day of the week, sanctioned as it is by religious practice in
many places, was widely incorporated in legislation at an early date; the lengthening of
this weekly rest through the creation of the five-day week has been strongly influenced
by statutory requirements and collective agreements.

Legislation granting annual holidays with pay and collective agreements providing for

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such holidays are almost entirely a development of the mid-20th century but are
increasingly common; moreover, there is a marked tendency for the minimum annual
holiday to be increased.

Complex questions may arise concerning the qualifying period of service required for
entitlement, breaks in the continuity of service, the calculation of average or normal
remuneration for the purpose of the holidays, the extent to which holidays may be
divided, and the liability for holidays where there has been a change of employer.

Health, safety, and welfare

Such general matters as occupational health and accident prevention regulations and
services; special regulations for hazardous occupations such as mining, construction, and
dock work; and provisions concerning such health and safety risks as poisons, dangerous
machinery, dust, noise, vibration, and radiation constitute the health, safety, and welfare
category of labour law. The efforts of organized safety movements and the progress of
occupational medicine have produced comprehensive occupational health and accident-
prevention services and regulations no longer limited to a few specially acute risks but
covering the full range of dangers arising from modern industrial processes. Major
developments include increased concern with the widespread use of chemicals and
increasing provision for welfare facilities related to employment, including feeding, rest,
recreation, and transport facilities.

Social security

Social security ranges from basic employers’ liability for occupational accidents to
comprehensive schemes that include income security in the form of sickness,
unemployment, retirement, employment injury, maternity, family, invalidity, and
survivors’ benefits and medical care. As with other aspects of labour law, a progression
from the particular to the general has been characteristic of the development of social
security legislation. By the time of World War I, workers’ compensation schemes were
general in industrialized and industrializing countries, but they were highly restrictive in
their provisions for specific cases. Pension insurance was part of Otto von Bismarck’s
legacy to Germany, but elsewhere there was little more to be found than pension funds

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for the privileged or noncontributory pensions for the aged. Great Britain had been the
pioneer in health and unemployment insurance. But social insurance remained a
pragmatic experiment limited to a few countries advanced in both economic
development and social policies. The coverage was limited to specific risks for certain
categories of protected persons. Its object was to protect the worker against the hazards
of life for which preindustrial societies provide by some form of community or family
responsibility, but the approach was piecemeal and was limited to the most-manageable
cases of acute hardship. Eventually, the impact of the Great Depression and World War II
in the industrial countries and the increasingly apparent inadequacy of earlier forms of
community responsibility in developing countries transformed the position. The concept
of social security, first given statutory expression in the United States in 1935 and in
New Zealand in 1938, superseded that of social insurance, and the 1943 Beveridge
Report (prepared by the British economist William Beveridge) developed it even further
to provide a basic income for all in need of such protection, in addition to providing
comprehensive medical care. The concept has continued to broaden since that time, and
social security has found increasing acceptance, though necessarily with varying degrees
of practical application, in countries in the most varied stages of economic development.

Acute, sometimes highly controversial, problems,

particularly in the cost and efficiency of
administrative organization of social security
programs and of medical care, remain almost
everywhere. But many countries have made

Yousuf Karsh: Lord Beveridge progress in making higher standards of medical
Lord Beveridge, photograph by Yousuf
Karsh.
care available as a legal right and in converting the
Camera Press/Globe Photos guarantee of a basic income as a protection against
want into provision for effective income
maintenance in the event of unemployment or loss of the family breadwinner. The idea is
still developing. The trend is to broaden it to the point at which it includes all the varied
hazards of life, including accidents of any kind, with the idea of facilitating economic
growth by reducing the human cost of structural change. The pattern varies widely in
different countries, partly as a reflection of different relationships between social

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security and private life, retirement, and health insurance, and partly because of
differences in economic and social conditions.

Trade unions and industrial relations

A number of complex legal relationships fall under the heading of industrial relations,
including the legal status, rights, and obligations of trade unions and employers’
organizations, collective bargaining and collective agreements, the representation of
employees at plant and enterprise level (including joint consultation and, where it exists,
codetermination and other forms of workers’ participation in management, even to the
extent of workers’ representation on company boards), and the prevention and settlement
of various types of labour disputes in general and of strikes and lockouts in particular.
Regarding such matters as the representative character and capacity of trade unions, their
legal status, the obligation to recognize and bargain with them, the enforceability of
collective agreements, the scope of activities permitted to trade unions, and their
obligations in contract and tort, there are wide variations both in the extent to which they
are subject to legal rules and in the content of such rules.

In the United States, for instance, there is a considerable body of law on these subjects,
the most important enactments being the National Labor Relations Act and the Labor
Management Relations Act of 1947 (the Taft-Hartley Act). In the United Kingdom the
law has hitherto remained marginal to most of these trade union issues, except for
legislation of 1871, 1875, and 1906, which had provided certain “immunities” (or
“privileges,” as they are sometimes called) for trade unions, particularly in connection
with trade disputes. Legislation enacted in the early 1980s restricted some of these
immunities or privileges, the trend being to expand the role of law in labour-
management relations to reduce the increasing disruption caused by industrial conflict in
a complex society.

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, industrial associations and libertarian think
tanks in the United States promoted legislation and initiated court cases aimed at limiting
the political and economic power of unions. So-called right-to-work laws, eventually
adopted in several states, prohibited unions from charging agency fees to nonunion

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workers to defray the cost of collective bargaining on their behalf. Several states also
severely restricted or prohibited collective bargaining by public (state) employees.
Although the U.S. Supreme Court, in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education (1977),
unanimously endorsed mandatory agency fees in the public sector (provided that they
were not used to support union political or ideological activities), that precedent was
later overturned in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal
Employees (2018), in which the Court declared that nonunion employees must
affirmatively consent to paying agency fees.

The administration of labour law

Another feature of labour law involves the organization and functioning of

administrative authorities such as labour departments, labour inspection services, and
other organs of enforcement. Administration of the law also encompasses the operation
of labour courts and other bodies for the settlement of grievances arising from existing
contracts or collective agreements and of industrial disputes arising between labour and
management.

The principal problem in many countries is to relate the process of labour administration
and its special intimacy with labour and management to overall economic and social
planning in a manner that gives proper weight to social considerations in economic
policy. This problem falls mostly outside the scope of labour law, but its solution does
depend in part on the extent to which labour law provides for and secures effective
standards of administration.

Special categories of workers

Labour law includes many provisions for particular occupational or other groups. These
sometimes appear as special parts of a general code, special legislation, or provisions
that limit specific legislative provisions with regard to particular groups. These special
provisions are common and important in mining, transportation (and in particular
maritime transport), commercial occupations, and agriculture. Cutting across these broad
sectors of economic activity are the traditional legal distinctions made in some countries
between blue-collar workers and salaried employees and certain newer distinctions, such

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as that between employees who earn annual salaries and have rights of tenure and
persons with no such rights engaged and remunerated on a monthly, weekly, or even
daily basis.

The rules of different systems

Among the distinctive elements of labour law that reflect the political, socioeconomic,
and legal differences among countries are variations in the relative importance of
statutory regulation and collective agreements, the prevalence of national or industrial
collective agreements as opposed to company or plant agreements, the importance in
certain countries of arbitral awards, and the extent to which labour law has been affected
by a country’s constitutional structure, especially with regard to judicial review of
constitutionality of legislation and judicial interpretation of constitutional powers,
limitations, and guarantees.

In the United Kingdom, for instance, the tradition has been to allow a maximum of
initiative and freedom to employers’ and workers’ organizations in the regulation of their
mutual relations and the determination of conditions of work. Most countries on the
Continent, by contrast, have detailed legislative provisions on these matters.

In the United Kingdom, however, the reluctance to legislate is becoming less marked;
there is now legislation concerning industrial training and discrimination in employment,
formerly matters for collective agreement; and legislation concerning collective
bargaining, safeguards against unfair dismissal, and certain trade union practices was
enacted in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In virtually all the developing countries the
absence of an established tradition of collective bargaining and the importance of the
part played by the state in economic development have placed a premium on legislative
action.

The coverage and scope, term of validity, and legal effect of collective agreements vary
widely. In Sweden there has been a practice of national negotiations covering the whole
of industry; in the United Kingdom agreements generally cover an industry or
occupation in the country as a whole or a particular industrial area; in the United States
and in Japan the unit of negotiation is generally the company or plant. The contrast may

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be less significant in practice than in principle, since an important company or plant

agreement tends to set an industry-wide pattern of negotiation (e.g., in the automobile
industry of the United States); nevertheless, the difference is important.

In Australia and New Zealand conciliation and arbitration tribunals determine matters
normally dealt with in other countries by legislation or collective agreement, such as
wages, hours, and conditions of work. The example has had some influence on systems
of arbitration courts established in developing countries, notably in Asia and East Africa,
but there is no tendency for it to be widely imitated elsewhere except as a device for
avoiding deadlocks in negotiation, especially in essential public services.

In the United States and Canada the development of labour law has been affected by
questions of constitutionality, which not only influenced its ultimate form but also
retarded its development. In the United States the constitutionality of workers’
compensation laws was much debated until it was favourably settled by the Supreme
Court in 1917; child-labour and minimum-wage regulations were delayed by judicial
decisions holding them to be outside federal competence and, in some cases, inconsistent
with the constitutional guarantee against deprivation by the state of life, liberty, and
property without due process of law (the guarantee here applying to the factory owner).
The first attempt of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration to regulate hours and
wages by codes of fair competition during the Great Depression was also held to be
unconstitutional as an improper delegation of legislative power by Congress to the
executive branch (see National Industrial Recovery Act). But thereafter the temper of
judicial review changed, and the validity of federal legislation guaranteeing free
collective bargaining in private industry, regulating wages and hours, and establishing
social security was upheld. In Canada, a pioneer in establishing a labour department,
restrictive judicial interpretations of the powers of the federal government had a similar
effect, and only after World War II did federal-provincial cooperation afford a basis for
achieving greater uniformity and more rapid progress.

Unifying tendencies

The range of possible solutions for similar problems often consists of variations of detail

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on a limited number of options, and certain common elements, often expressed in

identical or almost identical texts, recur in the law of different countries. These elements
derive partly from the legislation of other countries but increasingly from the influence
on the law of the international standards evolved by the International Labour
Organisation (ILO).

From the beginnings of modern labour legislation in the early 19th century, the law of
certain countries has been extensively used by other countries as a model. For example,
British factory legislation was widely copied at an early date, and German social-
insurance legislation provided a prototype from the time of Bismarck’s reforms. British
legislation has continued to serve as a model for the basic legislation of many states that
were formerly British dependencies and remains in force subject to modifications made
since independence. Much of the French Labour Code became applicable through the
1952 Labour Code for Overseas Territories to the states that were formerly French
dependencies and remains the basis of their labour law. The U.S. legislation of the period
from the 1930s onward has been exported to Japan, the Philippines, Liberia, and other
countries. The Mexican Labour Law of 1931, varied by elements derived primarily from
European models, had considerable influence on the early development of labour law in
a number of Latin American countries. Through quite another process, the labour law of
the Soviet Union (until the country’s dissolution in 1991) reshaped without replacing
some of the earlier elements in the labour law of the other socialist states. On the whole,
however, the national influences of particular countries and legal systems are declining.

During the mid-20th century the standards evolved by the ILO became the leading
external influence upon the labour law of many countries. They had a far-reaching
impact in virtually all the advanced countries except the United States and the erstwhile
Soviet Union, where external influences were secondary. In much of the developing
world they were of great importance even before independence, since much of the
legislation sponsored there by the colonial powers was based on ILO standards.

The ILO, created in 1919 as an autonomous partner of the League of Nations and since
1946 a specialized agency associated with the United Nations, adopts international
standards in the form of conventions and recommendations. Conventions when ratified

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become binding obligations of the member states ratifying them; recommendations are
designed as guides for legislation, collective agreements, administrative measures, and
so on. Elaborate follow-up arrangements, including examination of regular reports and
commissions of inquiry into complaints, are provided to ensure that the obligations
assumed are fulfilled. These standards, which already cover, in varying degrees of detail
and at varied stages of development, virtually all of the more important branches of
labour law, are constantly amplified and revised at the annual sessions of the
International Labour Conference.

Unification, or, as the process is often called, harmonization, of labour law is one of the
professed purposes of a number of regional organizations in different parts of the world,
but only in the Council of Europe, the European Union, and the Organization of
American States have tangible measures been taken, largely based on ILO standards.
The more important instruments adopted are the European Social Charter, the European
Social Security Code, the Social Security Regulations of the European Community, and
the Central American Convention on Social Security for Migrant Workers. The
Conferences of American and African Labour Ministers, sponsored by the Organization
of American States and the African Union (formerly the Organization of African Unity),
respectively, and the Conference of Asian Labour Ministers, which has developed
without any comparable sponsorship, discuss matters of general policy and the
coordination of action in the ILO rather than the formulation of specific standards. An
Arab Labour Organization was created in 1970.

Contemporary tendencies

Labour law differs from the older branches of the law in that its history has been in some
cases so much influenced by the ebb and flow of political change, its development so
rapid, and its expansion on a world scale so recent that it is difficult to predict its future.
But the trend is clear. In no place is labour law losing importance. While some types of
protective legislation, notably special provision for the protection of women workers, are
losing their importance, the tendency is toward more comprehensive legislation
embracing a wider range of subjects and often dealing with matters previously left to
collective agreement, individual contract, or the discretion of the employer.

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Labour law -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia https://www.britannica.com/print/article/326911

The transition everywhere has been from a class law protecting the weakest segment of
society to a community law designed to serve the common interest. This development is
seen in the elimination of limitations and exceptions to the law and in the increasing
emphasis given to matters of general interest, including full employment, equitable
distribution of wealth, and community responsibility for the incidence of misfortune in
individual lives.

Labour law must also be said to serve the social interest in promoting constructive
industrial relations and reducing the occurrence of open conflict. This evolution of
labour law is an important contribution to the evolution of the law as a whole, from a
law for the propertied and trading classes with a special chapter for the working class to
a common law for the entire community.

The importance of a body of law that has a dynamic and progressive impact rather than a
restrictive influence is now widely understood, and the need for legal flexibility to
facilitate economic and social development and change is increasingly appreciated. In
addition, the value of delegated powers and procedures of consultation with interested
groups and organizations to achieve such flexibility is more generally recognized. Social
objectives remain the test of the validity of economic policy, and labour law plays a
major part in defining these objectives and ensuring that economic policy respects them
in the interest of the whole community.

C. Wilfred Jenks Johannes Schregle The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Citation Information
Article Title: Labour law
Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica
Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Date Published: 25 September 2019
URL: https://www.britannica.com/topic/labour-law
Access Date: March 25, 2021

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