Servants in that they did not maintain the employer’s considerable obligations to provide for the social welfare of the worker, in among other ways, by guaranteeing year-long protection of employment. In these cases, the court seems to have based its conclusions on hidden and pre-contractual conditions, most immediately by drawing an analogy to the rules for purchase and the principle of the parties’equality before the law. Obviously, only a selection of the principles of the 1833 Statute on Hired Servants passed the test to be applied to the free contract of employment. The foundation of the court’s decision is probably more understandable in the light of decision1934:179 in which the court dealt with the refusal of certain employees to obey an order to work overtime. The court found that the employer had the right to insist that the work be performed notwithstanding the existence of a dispute, or that the job might not be found to be covered by the contractual agreement with the workers. This judge-made right of the employer to make the ad hoc interpretation of the contractual state of thing meant that the court did not consider the worker to be in the same position as in ordinary relationships of sale. Nor in this case, did the court base its argumentation on any cited source of law. As Göransson has noted, the decision was based mainly on a line of reasoning of an open legal-political nature, namely, the employer’s demand that production was not to be allowed to be interrupted because of disputes of interpretation. According to contractual principles, a seller who refuses delivery can take ad interimdecisions on his own risk of damages, but only if he misjudges the law. In labour relationships, on the contrary, the employer could act as judge of the first instance.596 Obviously only a selection of the principles of purchase law passed the test to be able to be applied to the free contract of employment. p a r t i v, c h a p t e r 9 292 596 Schmidt, F 1981, p. 291; Göransson 1988, pp. 261-262.
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