LABOUR LAW. This is a convenient term to include all those rules of law which govern the conditions under which per sons may work under the control of other persons, their employ ers. The expression "industrial law" is often used to cover the same ground. But this is apt to be understood in too narrow a sense, as including only that part of the law which affects what are, in common parlance, called industrial undertakings. It is true that in the general principles on which the International Labour Organization of the League of Nations is founded (art. 427 of the Treaty of Versailles) and in the Constitution of the Organiza tion itself (art. 396) the expression "industrial" was intended to cover a very wide field, and that the Permanent Court of Inter national Justice has itself declared that agriculture for the pur poses of the Organization is included in industry. But, on the other hand, we find "industry" contrasted with commerce and agricul ture in some of the draft conventions adopted by the General Conference of the Organization. It seems therefore better to avoid the use of an expression which would tend to imply any limitation of the subject under consideration to certain branches of employment. The essence of the matter is the fact of depend ent employment, of the relation of master and servant, not of employment in any particular kind of occupation. If a person is engaged by and works under the control of an employer, we have a relationship which becomes the necessary subject of legal regulation. It may be necessary also for the law to intervene to help a person who desires to be so engaged or an employer who desires to find a worker to work for him. Whenever the rela tionship of employer and dependent worker exists, either actually or potentially, we are within the sphere of labour law. It matters not whether the work to be done is manual labour or brain-work. The subordination of the worker to the employer is the only test to be applied, and the word "labour" seems convenient to con vey this idea of subordination, provided it is clearly understood that labour does not mean only manual labour. It is not always an easy matter to draw exactly the line which divides a dependent worker from an independent contractor or from a professional expert. The rules of English common law relating to an employ er's responsibility for the acts of, or for injuries to, a servant, have laid it down that, in order to be an "employer," a person must control the worker as regards the manner in which he does his work, as well as controlling the kind and amount of work to be done (see, for instance, Rourke v. White Moss Colliery Co., 1876, 2 C.P.D. 205, and Quarman v. Bennett, 1840, 6 M. and W. 499). Various British statutes have defined a "workman" and "employment." Thus, the Workmen's Compensation Act (now s. 3 of the Consolidating Act of 1925) defines a "workman" as "any person who has entered into or works under a contract of service or apprenticeship with an employer"; the National Health Insurance Act 1924 applies to all "employment . . . under any contract of service or apprenticeship." There are numerous legal decisions interpreting these definitions according to the differing facts of the various cases, but they all turn on the question of the kind of control exercised by the employer upon the worker's activities in the employment. Where this rule is found inappro
priate to the conditions of an employment, we sometimes find such employments expressly included in the statute. For instance, taxi-drivers, who had been held not to be "workmen" within the Workmen's Compensation Act, were brought under that Act by adding to the definition of "workman" a sentence covering the type of contract under which they work. The general definition suggested for the scope of English labour law must therefore be accepted with caution, as there are exceptions which spread out side it. But it can be taken as a rough working rule to define the branches of law included within the term "labour law." The law considered in this article can be roughly divided into two branches : the law affecting the contractual relations of em ployer and employed, and the law expressly intended to protect the weaker party, the worker, from possible injury, by imposing duties on the employer enforceable, not by the worker as a civil right, but by governmental authorities in quasi-criminal proceed ings. In other words, we may distinguish the law which regulates contracts of service from the law for the express protection of the workers, "protective" law, as it is convenient to call it. This dis tinction appears in the French Code of Labour (Code du travail et de la prevoyance sociale) book I. of which deals with contracts of labour, while book II. contains what may be called the protective part of labour law. It is convenient to consider labour law with this distinction in mind, but a strict line of division cannot be drawn. Laws often possess both characteristics at the same time. This is most often the case in connection with Acts affecting wages, where the civil right of the worker to sue for wages legally due to him under the Act is commonly combined with penalties impos able on the employer for breaking the law passed for the worker's protection. It is only with these two aspects of labour law that this article can deal, but these do not by any means exhaust the sphere of labour law. In making a general survey of the subject it would be logically impossible to rule out any law expressly affecting em ployers (or potential employers) or workers (or potential work ers) as such. For instance, the law relating to the civil rights of workers and employers to organize in defence of their interests over against each other, is an immensely important branch of labour law, necessarily dealt with in a separate article (see TRADE UNIONS). Again, measures for the insurance of workers against accidents, sickness, or old age, form strictly speaking a branch of labour law. Even those types of social insurance which are not necessarily connected with employment (such as sickness and old age insurances) are commonly made conditional upon employ ment, and usually impose financial obligations and administra tive duties upon employers of labour. There is, too, the vast ques tion of unemployment which involves much labour law, as regards the establishment and control of employment exchanges, the or ganization of unemployment insurance, and various other meas ures intended to prevent or relieve unemployment. Even emigra tion and immigration laws may or may not be labour law within our definition, according to their scope and intention.