berals, who still had more MPs than the Social Democrats, had been that the bills left a far-reaching right to sympathy actions even when a labour agreement was still in force, which was deemed to be primarily in the employers’ favour. In addition to the important different opinions, there were obvious institutional problems connected with the two-chamber system in parliament. The history of 1910-11 marked a turning point in the sense that from now on it seemed to be meaningless to propose detailed statutes about the terms of individual labour contracts. Likewise the problems were obvious regarding limiting the worker’s duty of obedience to the tasks for which the worker had been engaged or imposing a duty of information about plant regulations on the employers. Furthermore, it had turned out to be difficult to confirm by legislation that the section23 prerogatives, including the employer’s right to freely direct and distribute work should be a mandatory, pre-contractual term of eachcollective agreement. The road to use explicit regulation of the terms of the contract of employment seemed to be closed. Still, the debate on the section 23 prerogatives was alive. However, from now on the legislative efforts tended to rely much more on the collectivist system itself for regulating the terms of employment and maintaining peace on the labour market.The judicial system followed close behind. In1910 the Supreme Court declared that trade unions could be characterised as legal persons and in1915 that a collective agreement was legally binding. Nevertheless, the workers claimed to use their liberty of action and their alleged right to down tools in disputes concerning collective agreements. In 1916 the National Board of Health andWelfare issued a report on the regulation of collective agreements and the establishment of a labour court, concluding that legislation was an impassable road as far as the individual contract was concerned.The board asserted that the proposed legislation c o n t i n u i t y a n d c o n t r ac t 301 1915 - 1926
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