ASSIGNMENT NO: 1 on Labour law

TOPIC: LABOUR LAW MEANING DEFINATION AND

NATURE

Submitted By
D. VENKAT KRISHNA REDDY
Third year B.ALL.B

Submitted to
Prof. SURABHI SINGH
Assistant professor of law
DECLARATION:

I hereby declare that the research assignment no 1 titled LABOUR LAW MEANING
DEFINATION AND NATURE carried out

Under the guidance of M.S SURABHI SINGH is a record of bona-fide research work

Undertaken by me in partial fulfilment for award 5 year B.ALL.B offered by Christ academy

Institute of law, Bengaluru. The said work is an authentic research and not submitted before

Any other university academic programs for the award of any degrees.

D. VENKAT KRISHNA REDDY

Reg No: 45419231019

B.ALL.B 5TH SEM

DATE: 13.01.2022

PLACE: BANGLORE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 

First and foremost, praise and thanks in the God, the almighty, for his shower of

             Blessings throughout my assignment to complete it successfully.

             

I would like to express my deep and sincere gratitude to my experience 

MS SURABHI SINGH, assistant prof., Christ Academy Institute of law Bangalore for

Giving me the opportunity to work on this assignment. 

                    I am very grateful for his help throughout the assignment.

          Although, this report has been prepared with utmost care and deep routed   

                      Interest.  Even then I accept respondent and imperfection.

                                                                                        D. VENKAT KRISHNA REDDY  

                                                                                               B.ALL.B (B) 5thSEM 

                                                        
 CERTIFICATE

          This is to certify that the forgoing study by MR. Venkat Krishna Reddy student of

          Christ Academy institute of Law, Bangalore, in hereby approved as creditable

            Work on the topic “LABOUR LAW MEANING DEFINATION ELEMENTS”.

Place:  Bangalore        

Date:  13-01-2022                                                         

                                                                                  

                     MS. SURABHI SINGH

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF LAW

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

 DECLARATION

 CERTIFICATE

 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

 INTRODUCTION

 FACTORS IN LABOUR LAW

 HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

 ELEMENTS OF LABOUR LAW

 CONDITIONS OF WORK

 TRADE UNIONS &INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS

 ADMINISTRATION OF LABOUR LAW

 CONCLUSION

 BIBLOGRAPHY
RESEARCH METHODODLOGY:

This research is a doctrinal research with an illustration an explanatory approach the concept
has been substantiated with the relevant case laws and the researcher has made critical
analysis.

1. Library research
2. Primary and secondary sources (books, articles)

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

1. Whether historical development of labour law useful?

2. Whether the elements of labour law is basis for subject matter?

3. Whether there is a scope for trade unions & industrial relations to labour law?

INTRODUCTION:

Labour law, the varied body of law applied to such matters as employment, remuneration,
conditions of work, trade unions, and industrial relations. In its most comprehensive sense,
the term includes social security and disability insurance as well.

Unlike the laws of contract, tort, or property, the elements of labour law are some what less
homogeneous than the rules governing a particular legal relationship. In addition to the
individual contractual relationships growing out of the traditional employment situation,
labour law deals with the statutory requirements and collective relationships that are
increasingly important in mass production societies, the legal relationships between
organized economic interests and the state, and the various rights and obligations related to
some types of social services.
Labour law has won recognition as a distinctive branch of the law within the academic legal
community, but the extent to which it is recognized as a separate branch of legal practice
varied widely depending partly on the extent to which there is a labour code or other
distinctive body of labour legislation in the country concerned, partly on the extent to which
there are separate labour courts or tribunals, and partly on the extent to which an influential
group within the legal profession practice specifically as labour lawyers.

In the early phases of development the scope of labour law is often limited to the most
developed and important industries, to undertakings above a certain size, and to wage
earners; as a general rule, these limitations are gradually eliminated and the scope of the law
extended to include handicrafts, rural industries and agriculture, small undertakings, office
workers, and in some countries, public employees. Thus, a body of law originally intended
for the protection of manual workers in industrial enterprises is gradually transformed into a
broader body of legal principles and standards, which have basically two functions: the
protection of the worker as the weaker party in the employment relationship, and the
regulation of the relations between organized interest groups (industrial relations).

Factors in Labour Law  

The general tendency in the modern development of labour law has been the strengthening of
statutory requirements and collective contractual relations at the expense of rights and
obligations created by individual employment relationships. How important these latter
remain depends, of course, on the degree of personal freedom in the given society as well as
the autonomy of both employer and worker allowed by the actual operation of the economy.

In such matters as hours of work, health and safety conditions, or industrial relations, the
statutory or collective elements may define most of the substance of the rights and obligations
of the individual worker, while with respect to such things as the duration of his appointment,
his level and extent of responsibility, or his place in the scale of remuneration, these elements
may provide what is essentially a framework for individual agreement.

Historical development of labour law  

The origins of labour law can be traced back to the remote past and the most varied parts of
the world. While European writers often attach importance to the guilds and apprenticeship
systems of the medieval world, some Asian scholars have identified labour standards as far
back as the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi 18th century and the rules for labour
management relations in the Hindu Laws of Manu; Latin American authors point to the Laws
of the Indies promulgated by spain in the 17th century for its New World territories. None of
these can be regarded as more than anticipations, Labour law as it is known today is
essentially the child of successive industrial revolutions from the 18th century onward. It
became necessary when customary restraints and the intimacy of employment relationships in
small communities ceased to provide adequate protection against the abuses incidental to new
forms of mining and manufacture on a rapidly increasing scale at precisely the time when the
18th century Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the political forces that they set in
motion were creating the elements of the modern social conscience. It developed rather
slowly, chiefly in the more industrialized countries of western Europe, during the 19 th century
and attained its present importance, relative maturity, and worldwide acceptance only during
the 20th century.

The first landmark of modern labour law was the British Health and Morals of Apprentices
Act of 1802, sponsored by the elder Sir Robert Peel. Similar legislation for the protection of
the young was adopted in Zürich in 1815 and in France in 1841. By 1848 the first legal
limitation of the working hours of adults was adopted by the Landsgemeinde (citizens’
assembly) of the Swiss canton of Glarus. Sickness insurance and workers’
compensation were pioneered by Germany in 1883 and 1884, and compulsory arbitration in
industrial disputes was introduced in New Zealand in the 1890s. The progress of labour
legislation outside western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand was slow until after World
War I. The more-industrialized states of the United States began to enact such legislation
toward the end of the 19th century, but the bulk of the present labour legislation of the United
States was not adopted until after the Great Depression of the 1930s. There was virtually no
labour legislation in Russia prior to the October Revolution of 1917. In India children
between the ages of 7 and 12 were limited to nine hours of work per day in 1881 and adult
males in textile mills to 10 hours per day in 1911, but the first major advance was
the amendment of the Factory Act in 1922 to give effect to conventions adopted at the first
session of the International Labour Conference at Washington, D.C., in 1919.
In Japan rudimentary regulations on work in mines were introduced in 1890, but a proposed
factory act was controversial for 30 years before it was adopted in 1911, and the decisive step
was the revision of this act in 1923 to give effect to the Washington Convention on hours of
work in industry. Labour legislation in Latin America began in Argentina in the early years of
the century and received a powerful impetus from the Mexican Revolution, which ended in
1917, but, as in North America, the trend became general only with the impact of the Great
Depression. In Africa the progress of labour legislation became significant only from the
1940s onward.

The legal recognition of the right of association for trade union purposes has a distinctive
history. There is no other aspect of labour law in which successive phases of progress and
regression have been more decisively influenced by political changes and considerations. The
legal prohibition of such association was repealed in the United Kingdom in 1824 and in
France in 1884; there have been many subsequent change in the law and may well be further
changes, but these have related to matters of detail rather than to fundamental principles.

 In the United States freedom of association for trade union purposes remained precarious and
subject to the unpredictable scope of the labour injunction, by means of which the courts
helped restrain trade union activity until the 1930s. The breakthrough for trade unionism and
collective bargaining was achieved by the National Labor Relation Act of 1935. In many
other countries the record of progress and regression with respect to freedom of association
falls into clearly distinguished periods separated by decisive political changes. This has
certainly been the case with Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and much of eastern Europe; there
have been many illustrations of it, and there may be more in the developing world.

Labour codes or other forms of comprehensive labour legislation and ministries of labour
were not introduced until the 20th century. The first labour code was projected in France in
1901 and promulgated in stages from 1910 to 1927. Among the more advanced formulations
affecting the general condition of labour were the Mexican constitution of 1917 and the
Weimar constitution of Germany of 1919, both of which gave constitutional status to certain
general principles of social policy regarding economic rights. Provisions of this kind have
become increasingly common and are now widespread in all parts of the world.

Departments or ministries of labour responsible for the effective administration of labour

legislation and for promoting its future development were established in Canada in 1900, in
France in 1906, in the United States in 1913, in the United Kingdom in 1916, and in Germany
in 1918. They became general in Europe and were established in India and Japan during the
during the following years and become common in Latin America in 1930s.
A labour office was established in Egypt in 1930, but only in the 1940s and 50s did similar
arrangements begin to take root elsewhere in Asia and Africa. Under differing political
circumstances there continue, of course, to be wide variations in the authority and
effectiveness of such administrative machinery.

Elements of Labour Law   

The basic subject matter of labour law can be considered under nine broad heads

 Employment
 Individual employment
 Relationships
 Wages and remuneration
 Conditions of work
 Health 
 Safety
 Welfare
 Social security
 Trade union 
 Industrial relation
 The administration of labour law
 Special provisions for particular occupational or other groups

Employment

Employment considered as a basic concept and category of labour law is a relatively recent
development. Prior to the Great Depression and World War II the emphasis  was upon the
prevention or reduction of excessive unemployment rather than upon long- term employment
policy as part of a comprehensive scheme to promote economic stability and growth. The
new approach, arising from changes in political outlook and contemporary economic thought,
has increasingly found expression the creation of employment opportunities as a general
objective of policy.
To this end, legislation has established the necessary legal framework for the forecasting of
labour needs and availability and the provision of employment services including placement,
recruitment, vocational training, and apprenticeship.

Freedom from forced labour, equality of treatment in employment and occupation, and
unemployment benefits may, in a broad sense, be regarded as part of the same general
subject.

Individual Employment Relations

The making, modification, and termination of individual employment relations and the
resulting obligations for the parties form a second branch of labour law. It may also involve
certain aspects of promotion, transfer and dismissal procedures and compensation.

Historically speaking, the law on these matters was at one time described as the law of master
and servant. It implied a contractual relation in which one party agreed to be under the
control of the other in the sense that the servant was bound to obey orders not only as to the
work that he would execute but also as to the details of the work and the manner of its
execution. In return, the master had to pay a wage and grant certain minimum conditions for
the protection of the worker. As the law developed, the implied terms and statutory incidents
attached to this relationship concerning such matters as termination of employment, dismissal
procedures and compensation, minimum wages, conditions of work, and social security rights
began to limit freedom of contract. The individual employment relationship continues,
however, to be the subject matter of labour law to which general legal principles, as opposed
to statutes and collective agreements, apply.

Legally speaking, the individual contract of employment plays a more important role in the
Civil-Law countries than in common-law countries.

Wages and Remuneration   

The substantive law on wages and remuneration covers such elements as forms and methods
of payment, the protection of wages against unlawful deduction and other abuses, minimum
wage arrangements, the determination of wages, fringe benefits, and in highly sophisticated
economies, incomes policies. The concept of wage regulation as a restraint upon extreme
social evils has gradually been superseded by wage policies as deliberate instruments of
positive management designed to promote economic stability and growth.

Legal requirement concerning the forms of wages and methods of wage payment deal with
such matters as the proper notification of wages in legal tender or by check, the limitation and
proper valuation of payments in kind, the freedom of the workers to dispose of his wages,
regularity in wages payments, the treatment of wages as a privileged, or secured, debt, and
restrictions upon the attachment or assignment of wages.

Minimum – wage regulation takes varied forms; it may, following the pattern originally set
by the British Trades Boards Acts from 1909 onward, provide for wages councils or similar
bodies to fix wages in trades that have no arrangements for collective agreements for
collective agreements and where wages exceptionally low; it may consist, as in Australia and
New Zealand, essentially of arbitration arrangements; or it may, as in the United States under
the Fair Labor Standards acts, provide   a statutory rate or criteria for determining such a rate.
Statutory provisions and collective agreements for determining wages may embrace such
varied matters as skill differentials, the elimination of race and sex differentials, payment
according to results and the relationship of wages to productivity, and wage guarantees for
agreed periods of time. Fringe benefits, such as bonuses payable in varying contingencies, are
typically a matter for collective agreements. Incomes policies remain the subject of much
controversy. Their general purpose, sometimes embodied in legislation and sometimes
expressed in collective agreements or statements of government policy, is to
restrain inflationary pressures resulting from wage increases unrelated to increased
productivity and to do this in a manner that promotes a fairer distribution of income.

Conditions of work

The conditions of work involve hours, rest periods, and vacations; the prohibition of child
labour and regulation of the employment of young persons; and special provisions concerning
the employment of women. This part of the law originated in legislation for the protection of
children, young persons, and women against the worst evils of the Industrial Revolution. It
originally dealt particularly with such matters as admission to employment, night work, and
excessive hours, but the elements of its content and their relative importance were wholly
transformed during the 20th century.

As economic and educational progress and changed social habits limited child labour in the
industrialized countries and increasingly in the modernized sectors of developing economies,
the special concern of labour law with regard to the young shifted to such areas as vocational
guidance and training, career planning and advancement, and medical protection.
As employment opportunities for women became more varied and responsible, there was a
similar shift in emphasis from protective legislation—which came to be regarded as
discriminatory, since it tended to limit such opportunities—to legal guarantees of equal pay
and equal employment, coupled with adequate maternity protection and the provision of
facilities to enable women with family responsibilities to continue to be employed. In the late
20th and early 21st centuries, similar, though less comprehensive, accommodations to male
employees (e.g., the provision of paid or unpaid paternity leave) were increasingly common.
Whereas previously any statutory limitation of the hours of work of adult males was regarded
as being highly questionable, except in mines where it had been introduced on safety
grounds, in a society of much increased leisure it has now become a general practice to fix
maximum hours of work by statute or collective agreement. In many countries the eight-hour
day has been superseded by the 40-hour week as the statutory maximum for a wide range of
occupations, and collective agreements providing for substantially shorter working hours are
not uncommon. The details of hours regulation, whether by statute or collective agreement,
include such matters as exceptions and adjustments necessary for continuous shift working.
In addition, such regulations cover the extensions permitted for preparatory, complementary,
and intermittent work; the special rules for force majeure (work of absolute necessity),
accident, maintenance, and repair work; and the limitation, authorization, and remuneration
of overtime.
The principle of resting one day of the week, sanctioned as it is by religious practice in many
places, was widely incorporated in legislation at an early date; the lengthening of this weekly
rest through the creation of the five-day week has been strongly influenced by statutory
requirements and collective agreements.
Legislation granting annual holidays with pay and collective agreements providing for such
holidays are almost entirely a development of the mid-20th century but are increasingly
common; moreover, there is a marked tendency for the minimum annual holiday to be
increase 
Complex questions may arise concerning the qualifying period of service required
for entitlement, breaks in the continuity of service, the calculation of average or normal
remuneration for the purpose of the holidays, the extent to which holidays may be divided,
and the liability for holidays where there has been a change of employer.

Health, Safety, and Welfare

Such general matters as occupational health and accident prevention regulation and services;
special regulations and services; special regulations for  hazardous occupations such as
mining, construction, and dock work; and provisions concerning such health and safety risks
as poisons, dangerous machinery, dust, noise, vibration, and radiation constitute the health,
safety, and welfare category of labour law.

The efforts of organized safety movements and the progress of occupational medicine have
produced of occupational medicine have produced comprehensive occupational health and
accident prevention services and regulation no longer limited to a few specially acute risks
but covering the full range of dangers arising from modern industrial processes. Major
developments include increased concern with the widespread use of chemicals and increasing
provision for welfare facilities related to employment, including feeding, rest, recreation, and
transport facilities.

Social Security

Social security ranges from basic employers liability for occupational accidents to
comprehensive schemes that includes income security in the form of sickness,
unemployment, retirement, employment injury, maternity, family, invalidity, and survivors
benefits and medical care. As with other aspects of labour law, a progression from the
particular to the general has been characteristic of the development of social security
legislation. By the time of World War I, workers compensation schemes were general in
industrialized and industrializing countries, but they were highly restrictive in their provisions
for specific cases.
Pension insurance was part of Otto von Bismarcks legacy to Germany, but elsewhere there
was little more to be found than pension funds for the privileged or non contributory pensions
for the aged. Great Britain had been the pioneer in health and unemployment insurance. But
social insurance remained a pragmatic experiment limited to a few countries advanced in
both economic development and social policies. The coverage was limited to specific risks
for certain categories of protected persons. Its object was to protect the worker against the
hazards of life for which preindustrial societies provide by some form of community or
family responsibility, but the approach was piecemeal and was limited to the most –
manageable cases of acute hardship. Eventually, the impact of Great Depression and World
War II in the industrial countries and the increasingly apparent inadequacy of earlier forms of
community responsibility in developing countries transformed the position.

The concept of social security, first given statutory expression in the United States in 1935
and in New Zealand in 1938, superseded that of social insurance, and the 1943 Beveridge
Report developed it even further to provide a basic income for all in need of such protection,
in addition to providing comprehensive medical care.

The concept has continued to broaden since that time, and social security has found
increasing acceptance, though necessarily with varying degrees of practical application, in
countries in the most varied stages of economic development.

Trade Unions and Industrial Relations

A number of complex legal relationships fall under the heading of industrial relations,
including the legal status, rights, and obligations of trade unions and employers
organizations, collective bargaining and collective agreements, the representation of
employees at plant and enterprise level and the prevention and settlement of various types of
labour disputes in general and of strikes and lockouts in particular.

Regarding such matters as the representative character and capacity of trade unions, their
legal status, the obligation to recognize and bargain with them, the enforceability of
collective agreements, the scope of activities permitted to trade unions, and their obligations
in contract and tort, there are wide variations both in the extent to which they are subject to
legal rules and in the content of such rules.
In the United States, for instance, there is a considerable body of law on these subjects, the
most important enactments being the National Labor Relations Act of 1947. In the United
Kingdom the law has hitherto remained marginal to most of these trade union issues, except
for legislation of 1871, 1875, and 1906, which had provided certain “immunities” for trade
unions, particularly in connection with trade disputes.

The administration of labour law

Another feature of labour law involves the organization and functioning of administrative
authorities such as labour departments, labour inspection services and other organs of
enforcement.  Administration of the law also encompasses the operation of labour courts and
other bodies for the settlement of grievances arising from existing contracts or collective
agreements and of industrial disputes arising between labour and management.

The principal problem in many countries is to relate the process of labour administration and
its special intimacy with labour and management to overall economic and social planning in a
manner that gives proper weight to social considerations in economic policy.

This problem falls mostly outside the scope of labour law, but its solution does depend in part
on the extent to which labour law provides for and secures effective standards of
administration.

Special categories of workers

Labour law includes many provisions for particular occupational or other groups. These
sometimes appear as special parts of a general code, special legislation, or provisions thet
limit specific legislative provisions with regard to particular groups. These special provisions
are common and important in mining, transportation, commercial occupations, and
agriculture. Cutting across these broad sectors of economic activity are the traditional legal
distinctions made in some countries between blue – collar workers and salaried employees
and certain newer distinctions, such as that between employees who earn annual salaries and
have rights of tenure and persons with no such rights engaged and remunerated on a monthly,
weekly, or even daily basis
The rules of different systems

    Among the distinctive elements of labour law that reflect the political, socioeconomic, and
legal differences among countries are variations in the relative importance of statutory
regulation and collective agreements, the prevalence of national or industrial collective
agreements, the prevalence of national or industrial collective agreements as opposed to
company or plant agreements, the importance in certain countries of arbitral awards, and the
extent to which labour law has been affected by a country’s constitutional structure,
especially with regard to judicial review of constitutionality of legislation and judicial
interpretation of constitutional powers, limitations, and guarantees.

In the United Kingdom, for instance, the tradition has been to allow a maximum of initiative
and freedom to employer’s and worker’s organizations in the regulation of their mutual
relations and the determination of conditions of work. Most countries on the Continent, by
contrast, have detailed legislative provisions on these matters.

In the United Kingdom, however, the reluctance to legislate is becoming less marked; there is
now legislation concerning industrial training and discrimination in employment, formerly
matters for collective agreement; and legislation concerning collective bargaining, safeguards
against unfair dismissal, and certain trade union practices was enacted in the late 1970s and
early 1980s. in virtually all the developing countries the absence of an established tradition of
collective bargaining and the importance of the part played by the state in economic
development have placed a premium on legislative action.

Unifying Tendencies

The range of possible solutions for similar problems often consists of variations of details on
a limited number of options, and certain number of options, and certain common elements,
often expressed in identical or almost identical texts, recur in the law of different countries.
These elements derive partly from the legislation of other countries but increasingly from the
influence on the law of the international standards evolved by International Labour
Organization (ILO).  

CONCLUSION:

India’s constitution is the basis of all laws in our country. The labour laws are also rendered
in compliance with the constitution, and the abolition of particular law results in any violation
of constitutional law. The DPSP play a major role in the development of new labour laws in
India

BIBLOGRAPHY:

1. Labour law history definition and elements

https://www.britannica.com/topic/labour-law

2. Labour law

https://www.coursehero.com/file/122525626/labour-lawdocx/

3. Defination of labour law

https://www.academia.edu/10258139/Definition_of_labour_law