legal conceptualisation concerning labour relations can be followed along two different tracks: the Romanistic and the Germanistic tradition. The Romanistic tradition starts from the Roman law concept locatio conductio, which concerned contracts on the hiring of things, more precisely when a master (dominus) temporarily allowed another person to dispose over his slave. Supiot claims that this model was transferred to modern society.Thus, the great post revolutionary private law codes, such as the French (1804), the Dutch (1838) and the Italian (1865) assigned contractual analysis a central role for the development of legal concepts concerning labour relationships.This assignment was in turn aimed at eroding the established corporate organisation of society in which the individual received competence only if he or she was integrated into an interest group that was accepted by the state. In comparison with the personal and hierarchical subordination that characterised the corporate organisation, contractual thinking could be a guarantee for the worker’s individual integrity, which made him able to negotiate about his own work force.The model presupposed a free contract regarding hiring, by which the worker was transformed into an object, a commodity that conceptually was separated from his person. The Romanistic culture is also alleged to have influenced the English and British conceptions of labour relations. Common law elaborated significant procedural aspects, which meant that the acknowledgement of individual rights was subordinated to the right to pursue a lawsuit. British labour law history, however, contrasted with most European continental countries, which, beside the general theory of contract, created a specific concept of contract of employment. In Great Britain the pre-industrial concept of “service” became the cornerstone of a distinction between contract of service and contract for service.The concepts were developed case by case and the courts showed a considerable aversion to abandon concrete definitions of different kinds c o n t i n u i t y a n d c o n t r ac t 29
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