c o n t i n u i t y a n d c o n t r ac t 255 which wanted to make the conditions of the collective agreements binding for both the organisations and their individual members. The demand for mandatory arbitration in employment disputes, as well as for the workers’ far-reaching duty of obedience could also derive its jurisprudential legitimacy from the references of the Social Democratic private law professor, Östen Undén, to the employer’s “master prerogatives” as the naturale contractus of the employment contract. During the 1920s, the long, drawn-out question concerning the revision of the Statute on Hired Servants of 1833 would finally be resolved. More and more politicians and debaters arrived at the position that many rules in this master-servant statute were not only offensive for the working party, but they were also poorly adapted to the new working life. In step with an increased political equality, criticism grew of legislation that gave the employer the right to refuse to let employees leave the household or to keep their belongings in another place as well as the right to strike employees under the age of 18. At the same time, several arguments were presented against giving the parties increased freedom of contract.Thus, it was put forward that Sweden needed a legislation on employment contracts which met agriculture’s special need for long-term relations, young workers’ need for protection and upbringing by the employer as well as industry’s need to be able to flexibly change the conditions for the workers’ obligation to perform tasks.520 In1920, some of the regulations of the Master-Servant Statute were revoked, among them, those concerning the police authority to pick up refractory workers, fines, forfeiture of wages, the master’s right to chastise underaged servants, increasing the severity of a punishment in the case of insulting the master or 9. 5. 1 the maste r-se rvant statute abol i shed 1926 520 FKTfU1 1918:15, pp. 1-8; AKTfU4 1918:6, pp. 1-5.
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