was a legally binding contract. Thus, a party, which meant a union, which broke a collective agreement, could be ordered to pay damages.Thus, collective agreements could function as instruments to insure industrial peace and put pressure on those who considered breaking the contract.474 Despite the decision of the Supreme Court in 1915, there was no clear and accepted understanding of collective agreements. The Act on Contracts, which had been introduced the same year and concerned contracts of property law in general, showed inevitable influences from the general part of the German Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch from1900. Among other things, the Swedish act prescribed on a general level what the committee of 1907 had already proposed concerning individual labour contracts. An agreement should be null and void if either party “had taken advantage of the other party’s distress, imprudence or thoughtlessness to stipulate for a term, which [was] manifestly exorbitant”. The act also had a general clause which meant that a court could annul a contract if it infringed on “good faith”.475 The rules reflected that the state was now dedicated to intervening on the market as well as giving judges considerable scope for concretising abstract legal rules. In the previous part (III), we have seen how representatives of Swedish 19th century legal science, in the footsteps of the German historical school, referred to general legal principles, established customs and the nature of things for those cases where legislation did not regulate labour contracts. Certain parts of the 1833 Statute on Hired Servants were considered suitable to apply even to the new, “free” labour contract that arose alongside the p a r t i v, c h a p t e r 9 234 9. 3 swedi sh legal wri t ing 1885-1930 . an inadequate means for making labour law 474 NJA1915 p. 233, I-III; Sigeman in Schmidt, F. 1997, pp. 74-75. 475 “begagnat sig av den andres trångmål, oförstånd eller lättsinne till att betinga sig villkor, som uppenbart är oskäligt” and “tro och heder”.Avtalslagen (The Act of Contract), sections 31 and 33.
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