Friday, November 11, 2022

From Wikipedia: Statute of Labourers 1351

For our look at labor law

- Click here for the entry.

The Statute of Labourers was a law created by the English parliament under King Edward III in 1351 in response to a labour shortage, which aimed at regulating the labour force by prohibiting requesting or offering a wage higher than pre-Plague standards and limiting movement in search of better conditions.[1] The popular narrative about its success and enforcement holds that it was poorly enforced and did not stop the rise in real wages.[2] However, immediately after the Black Death, real wages did not rise, despite the labour shortage.[3]

The statute set a maximum wage for labourers that was commensurate with wages paid before the Black Death, specifically, in the year 1346. It also mandated that able-bodied men and women should work and imposed harsh penalties for those who remained idle.[4]

For more: United States labor law.

United States labor law sets the rights and duties for employees, labor unions, and employers in the United States. Labor law's basic aim is to remedy the "inequality of bargaining power" between employees and employers, especially employers "organized in the corporate or other forms of ownership association".[3] Over the 20th century, federal law created minimum social and economic rights, and encouraged state laws to go beyond the minimum to favor employees.[4]