to be regulated in the collective agreement and protected by an industrial peace obligation. Ever since, the first part concerning “natural” connection has been deemed as far more important than the second one concerning professional skill.Thus, in this respect, the court’s lawmaking was more akin to the tradition of the master-servant statutes, SAF’s section 23 and the “December compromise” of 1906 than the ambitions to limit the duty of obedience which was reflected in the Statute of Freedom of Trade of 1864 and parts of the bills of 1901 and 1910. A series of subsequent decisions pointed in the same direction, except for the important difference that the master’s vague obligations to take care of workers were not transferred to the new, free contract of employment. Case 1932:100 maintained, what the court called, the “general principle of law” according to which the employer had a right to freely dismiss any worker. In the decision 1934:179 the court concluded that the employer had the sovereignty to make ad hoc interpretation in case of the disputes about the true meaning of a contract, which obligated the worker to obey, even if the employer’s judgement turned out to be wrong. In many essential respects, the position of Swedish labour law for decades was fixed by the court’s precedents from around1930, which in turn reflected the employers’ demands from the time of the first national agreements in 1906.Thus,Arthur Engberg’s prophecy at the parliament of 1928 came true. The labour court’s majority, which meant the legally trained members in alliance with the employers’ representatives, founded its decisions on the idea that a collection of hidden terms followed by the “nature” of every collective agreement, and were thus protected by the legislation’s peace obligation. These natural terms happened to agree with the section23 prerogatives of SAF’s charter. Even if it was unclear whether these notions of natural rights were descriptive or prescriptive, the legal consep a r t i v, c h a p t e r 1 0 314
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