Law and Labour

Extract

The above title may cover a wide field of social problems and of social legislation. Indeed, modern society, faced with a very complex social situation arising from a highly developed economic structure, has built up a system of laws, hardly less complex than the social conditions they were intended to deal with. Yet despite factory acts, social insurance schemes, and trade union law, the existing English law is insufficient to deal with the industrial problems of the present time. Some measures are necessary to alter the legal status of labour and of industrial relations. Although practical steps along these lines have beert frequently discussed at the meetings of Royal Commissions, and although some proposals of this nature have actually been realized in various English industries, the subject is still unfamiliar to the English public. Yet great importance is attached to such a way of social reform in other countries and considerable success has been achieved by it in Italy and Germany. While in the former of these two countries trade unions and employers’ organizations have become mere instruments of the State—a solution hardly acceptable in a country like England—in Germany there developed after the war a well-balanced Labour Law of whose particular characteristics many may recommend themselves to people in this country. We will therefore describe the status of Labour and of industrial relations as created by the new German Labour Law, comparing it with conditions in England.