purely a matter of private law. He emphasised that the obligations of the relationship were based upon a notion of the two parties as autonomous persons and of their free right of determination. NeverthelessWinroth asserted that some rules of the traditional master-servant relationship,which had an“essential or natural character”, also should apply to the new, free service contract, which lay outside the concept of master and servant. In this context, Winroth supplied important guidelines for a legal method of interpreting an agreement. He wrote that if neither the legislation nor the contract provided guidance for the interpretation of a contract, the determining source ought to be such customs or established positions which were observable in people’s ways of living or in the courts’ decisions. First among the rules that could be considered as natural and thus inherent parts of modern labour contracts,Winroth placed the worker’s far-reaching and open-ended duties of obedience and loyalty towards the employer. However, whenWinroth tried to specify other “natural” consequences of the free service contract he was considerable vague.This is not surprising, considering the great weight he put upon established customs as important legal sources and that the contemporary situation on the Swedish labour market was unclear. Winroth’s theses in 1878 were elements of a public debate, which, at least since 1815, had paid attention to the changing conditions of working life. During the second half of the 19th century, industry slowly began to expand in Sweden. However, still at the time when Winroth published his book in1878, the country’s working life was dominated by traditional tasks within agriculture.Thus the “free” contracts of service represented just a marginal political-legal problem. This state of affairs was soon to be changed in several ways. First, an increasing number of workers, especially in densely p a r t i v, c h a p t e r 5 126 5. 2 the “social i s sue” grows into the “worke r i s sue”
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=