to intervene on the labour market in order to use binding legal rules for preventing the parties from reaching conclusions that were inexpedient from“a general point of view”.The labour contract brought the parties in “such a closer relationship to each other, that a legal regulation of the contracts’ foundations [was] particularly necessary and desirable”. However, the debate in parliament in 1910 and 1911 demonstrated that there were great disagreements about to what extent section 23 really did reflect generally accepted customs as well as whether it should be protected by a legislative act. Statements from different political camps gave evidence of the section and the employers’ prerogatives in question being very controversial topics at every single negotiation on collective agreements. Leading Social Democrats, such as Hjalmar Branting, Herman Lindqvist and Carl Lindhagen as well, on the one hand admitted that the employer’s supremacy in question might appear as evident and natural. On the other hand, they stated that its practical consequences were so grave, that the prerogatives needed to be limited and that the workers had to be given some kind of influence.The alleged patterns of living, which the government now tried to confirm legally,were neither firmly established in practice, nor legitimate among the workers. Some Liberals, such as Schotte,Wijk, Sandström and Larsson from Klagstorp, followed a similar line, but just to the point of admitting that the issue in question was disputed and should thus be left to voluntary contracts instead of being fixed by legislation. In an effort to reach a compromise between the two chambers of parliament, the section23 prerogatives eventually were deleted from the bill on collective agreements. A group of Conservatives then stood up in the first chamber and claimed that the prerogatives formed a part of the employer’s “inalienable human rights”, although they had been the cause of strife at every conclusion of a collective agreement.The famous liberal lawyer Johannes Hellner joined the group by emphasising that even if c o n t i n u i t y a n d c o n t r ac t 299
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