be used for other tasks, except in cases of emergency. Several extracts from the minutes indicate a deep-running disunity about the meaning of this rule. During several meetings in November 1908 the members discussed whether the duty of obedience really could be limited to the tasks for which the servant had been engaged and if he or she should have the right to leave the master’s house. From the meeting on November 12, it was noted that the master must have the right to require every reasonable task, in case that the parties had not specifically agreed upon a limitation of the work to certain tasks. Furthermore, the committee’s members could not come to terms whether the servant should be allowed to go away from the master’s house or sleep somewhere else without the master’s permission.The next day, they reached a compromise that made the worker’s freedom of movement dependent on the risk it could mean to the service in question. If, however the worker lived in the master’s house or was under his immediate supervision, he should not be allowed to leave the place, sleep anywhere else or stay out after the curfew that the master prescribed. Simultaneously, the master was obliged to furnish the worker with wholesome and sufficient food and a suitable lodging.395 The data from the committee of 1907indicate that it was a very tricky problem to use legislation for regulating the individual contract of employment, in particular when it came to the worker’s duty of obedience. In real life, this disagreement about the section23prerogatives was manifested in considerably more sanguinary forms. In 1908 the Shipbrokers’Association of Norrland (Sw. Norrlands stuvareförbund) joined SAF and claimed that the collective agreement with the Transport Workers’ Union (Transportarbetareförbundet) should confirm that the employer had the right to freely direct and distribute work, which the trade union p a r t i v, c h a p t e r 8 192 395 Förslag till lag om tjänsteaftal mellan husbönder och tjänare (Draft on a MasterServant Act), section 17, Notes from November 12, 13, 1908, Drafts from January and June 1909.YK77.The National Archives, Stockholm.
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