c o n t i n u i t y a n d c o n t r ac t 335 prescribed and which allowed them to change the terms of work to reach optimal efficiency and compatibility. Concurrently with an increased political influence, the workers wanted protection of employment and to influence working conditions, concerning how, when and where obligations should be fulfilled. Consequently they claimed a right, with the weapon of the strike in their hands, to negotiate salaries in case the employer changed tasks or fired a worker for dubious reasons. When the patriarchal forms of labour organisation broke down, the traditional notion about societal harmony was replaced by a perception of a conflict between two different outlooks on labour relations. The well-established confusion about contract and status in labour relations got new dimensions, which influenced the intensive debate about the worker’s duty of obedience and the employer’s right to freely direct and distribute work right up till the end of the 1920s. In spite of an essentially contractual approach to labour relations, representatives of the employers, conservative and liberal politicians as well as legal scholars claimed that a collection of employer prerogatives, which implied the worker’s duty of obedience, were natural terms of each individual contract of employment. Thus, the employer’s right to freely employ and dismiss workers as well as to direct and distribute work was regarded to be legally founded upon “the nature of things”,“natural rights”, etc. However, although the notion of these prerogatives of the employer had been recognised by section23of SAF’s charter of 1905, the “December compromise” between LO and SAF in1906 and in many collective agreements during the 1920s, there was no clear line concerning what was really meant by “natural”. In particular there was disagreement about the concept’s relationship to customs and customary law.Were these natural principles built upon an acceptance of already established customs or did the allusions to nature rather reflect political ambitions as to what
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