Moreover, the study shows how complex was the so-called move from status to contract. It is true that the employment relationships in general were analysed from contractual points of departure. At the same time these notions were seasoned with ideas about personal, diffuse bonds between the parties and the worker’s subordination and duties of obedience and loyalty. During the whole period a large number of employers and politicians expressed concerns about the existing rules not guaranteeing that the workers obeyed the employers’ orders.Although the employment relationship for a long time had been characterised as a branch of private law, still the preparatory works of the 1928 legislation deemed it necessary to point out that criminal sanctions against breaches of labour contracts would violate the Swedish conception of justice. For a long time, the idea of using punishment was latent in the public debate.599 More or less openly articulated there was a notion that the employment relationship not only concerned the parties to the contract. From the very beginning of the formative period, one can find lots of statements claiming that the relationship in question presupposed particular, pre-contractual terms which applied regardless of what the parties might have agreed upon. The principal starting point of the Swedish public debate as well as of legal writing was that the employee should be legally treated as a free actor on a market. Nevertheless the conclusion was that the contract of employment differed from other private law contracts, primarily by being essentially an authoritarian relationship of subordination and obedience. From a liberal perspective, subordination in relation to another private actor could be founded only on a free declaration of will from the one subordinated.Thus a limitation of the equality between parties must theoretically be legitimated on a contractual foundation. p a r t i v, c h a p t e r 1 0 316 10. 1. 2 from status to contract? 599 In a committee report of 1933, Ragnar Bergendal, professor of criminal law, proposed criminal sanctions for downing tools. Nycander 2002, pp. 66-67.
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