ployer or his representative.The worker obtains a quantitatively fixed remuneration while the opposite party receives an option unilaterally to change the conditions of the employee’s work to other duties, other times or other places.6 Another common feature could possibly be added: (iv) Although the subordination is unspecified, it is not unlimited.The employee is not obliged to fulfil tasks which conflict with legal sources of “higher value”, such as legislation, collective agreements, equity, custom and good faith, or are dangerous to the employee’s life and health. In this respect, however, great differences are to be found due to the varying extent to which different countries have allowed legislation and collective solutions to limit the scope of the employer’s prerogatives or to promote the worker’s social security.The numerous Swedish acts during the 1970s concerning the employee’s protection of employment and right of participation in decision-making are typical examples of legislative efforts to make exceptions from the chief rule of Swedish labour law. The legal concept of the contract of employment combines freedom of contract and equality between the parties with notions of subordination and inequality.This confusing combination mirrors the underlying political problem of finding a balance between the economic values represented by the workforce as a commodity on a market, and the personal element, that is the worker, as a human being and as a citizen.This problem of balance is also an important background for understanding the mixture of private law and public law that characterises current labour law in all Western countries. Swedish legal writing from the 1950s has in general focused on the collective components of labour law and its history. Even if p a r t 1 , c h a p t e r 1 20 6 “La caractéristique essentielle de la relation de travail est la circonstance qu’une personne accomplit, pendant un certain temps, en faveur d’une autre et sous la direction de celli-ci, des prestations en contrepartie desquelles elle touche une rémuneration”. CJCE 21 nov. 1991, URSSAF de la Savoie c./SARL Hostellerie le Manoir, Aff. C27 - 91. Supiot 1994, p. 113, fn 4.
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