The Theory and Policy of Labour Protection. Germany. Laws, statutes, etc.

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СКАЧАТЬ of which does not admit of the regular division of labour into stated periods, or in which, from the nature of the employment, business is confined to a certain season of the year; but in such cases the work-time shall not exceed 36 hours in the week for children, and 60 hours for young persons (in spinning houses 64, in brick-kilns 69 hours).”

1. Meaning of maximum working-day in the customary use of the term

      In the existing labour protective legislation, and in the impending demands for Labour Protection, the maximum working-day is variously enforced, regulated and applied. In order to arrive at a clear understanding of the matter it will be necessary to examine the various meanings attached by common use to the term working-day.

      Let us take first the different methods of enforcement.

      It is enforced either by contract and custom, or by enactment and regulation. Hence a distinction must be drawn between the maximum working-day of contract and the legal (regulated) working-day. Now-a-days when we speak of the maximum working-day we practically have in mind the legal working-day. But it must not be forgotten that the maximum duration of labour has long been regulated by custom and contract in whole branches of industry, and that the maximum working-day of contract has paved the way for the progressive shortening of the legal maximum working-day.

      Even the party who are now demanding a general eight hours maximum working-day desire to preserve the right of a still further shortening of hours by contract, generally, or with regard to certain specified branches of industry; the Auer Motion (§ 106) runs thus: “The possibility of fixing a still shorter labour-day shall be left to the voluntary agreement of the contracting parties.”

      Certainly no objection can be raised to making provision for the maintenance of freedom of contract with regard to shortening the duration of daily labour. The right to demand such freedom in contracting, is, in my opinion, incontrovertible.

      Next we come to the various modes of regulating the maximum working-day.

      It may either be fixed uniformly for all nations as the regular working-day for all protected labour, or it may be specially regulated for each industry in which wage-labour is protected; or else a regular maximum working-day may be appointed for general application, with special arrangements for certain industries or kinds of occupation. This would give us either a regular national working-day, or a system of special maximum working-days, or a regular general working-day with exceptions for special working days.

      The system of special working-days has long since come into operation, although to a more or less limited degree, by the action of custom and contract. The penultimate paragraph of § 120 of the von Berlepsch Bill, admits the same system – of course only for hygienic purposes – in the following provision: “The duration of daily work permissible, and the intervals to be granted, shall be prescribed by order of the Bundesrath (Federal Council) in those industries in which the health of the worker would be endangered by a prolonged working-day.”

      The mixed system would no doubt still obtain even were the regular working-day more generally applied, since there will always be certain industries in which a specially short working-day will be necessary (in smelting houses and the like).

      The labour parties of the present day demand the regular legal working-day together with the working-day of voluntary contract.

      By maximum working-day we must, as a rule, understand the national and international, uniform, legal, maximum working-day.

      Thirdly, we come to the various aspects which the maximum working-day assumes according to whether it is given a general or only a limited sphere of application. In considering its application we have to decide whether or not its protection shall be extended to all branches and all kinds of business, and degrees of danger in protected industry, and further, whether, however widely extended, it shall apply within each industrial division so protected to the whole body of labourers, or only to the women and juvenile workers.

      The maximum working-day is thus the “general working-day” when applied to all industries without exception. When this is not the case, it is the restricted working-day, which may also be called the factory maximum working-day, as it really obtains only in factory and quasi-factory labour. The term factory working-day is further limited in its application in cases where its protection extends, not to all the labourers in the factory, but to the women and juvenile workers only, or to only one of these classes. Hence a distinction must be drawn between the factory working-day for women and children, and the maximum factory working-day extended also to men. We shall therefore not be wrong in speaking of this as the working-day of women and juvenile workers, nor shall we be putting any force on the customary usage, if by factory working-day we understand the working day prescribed to all labourers in a factory.

      We shall find a further limitation of the meaning in considering the aim of the protection afforded, for in certain cases the maximum working-day, even when extended to all labourers employed in a factory, is restricted to such occupations in the factory as are dangerous to health. In such cases, it might be designated perhaps the hygienic working-day.

      The maximum working-day, in the sense of the furthest reaching and therefore most hotly contested demands for regulation of time, means the uniform maximum working-day, fixed by legislation nationally, or even internationally, and not the maximum working-day of factory labour merely, or of female and child-labour in factories, nor the hygienic working day. This working-day is authoritatively fixed – provisionally at 10 hours, then at 9 hours, and finally at 8 hours – as the daily maximum duration of working-time, in the Auer Motion (§ 106 and 106a, cf. § 130). Section 106 (paragraphs 1 to 3) runs thus: “In all business enterprises which come within this Act (Imperial Industrial Code), the working-time of all wage-labourers above the age of 16 years shall be fixed at 10 hours at the most on working-days, at 8 hours at the most on Saturday, and on the eve of great festivals, exclusive of intervals of rest. From January 1st, 1894, the highest permissible limit of working time shall be fixed at 9 hours daily, and from January 1st, 1898, at 8 hours daily.” According to the same section, the 8 hours day shall be at once enforced for labourers underground, and the time of going in to work and coming out from work shall be included in the working-day. “Daily work shall begin in summer not earlier than 6 o’clock, in winter not earlier than 7 o’clock, and at the latest shall end at 7 o’clock in the evening.”

      We have still two important points to consider before we arrive at the exact meaning of the general maximum working-day. The first point touches the difference between those employments in which severe and continuous labour for the whole working-time is required, and those in which a greater or less proportion of the time is spent by the workman in waiting for the moment to come when his intervention is required. The second point touches the inclusion or non-inclusion, in the working day, of other outside occupation, of home-work, or of non-industrial work of any kind, besides work undertaken in some one particular industrial establishment. With regard to the first point, the question may fairly be raised whether in industries in which a large proportion of time is spent in waiting unoccupied, the maximum working-day is to be fixed as low as in those industries in which the work proceeds without intermission. And it is a question of material importance in the practical application of the maximum working day whether or not work at home, or in another business, or in sales-rooms, or employment in non-industrial occupations, should or should not be allowed in the normal working-day.

      The labour-protective legislation hitherto in force has been able to disregard both these points, for with the exception of the English Shop Regulations Act (1886) it hardly affected other occupations than those in which work is carried on without intermission. But there are points that cannot be neglected when the question arises of a general maximum working-day for all industrial labour, or all industrial wage-service alike – as in the Labour agitation now rife in the country.

      The Auer Motion, for instance, ought to have dealt with both these questions in a definite manner; but it did not do this. СКАЧАТЬ