The Theory and Policy of Labour ProtectionSchäffle, A. (Albert)
General
The Theory and Policy of Labour Protection
Schäffle, A. (Albert)
Labor laws and legislation -- Germany
Furthermore it includes that protection afforded by the pressure of
religion, the common conscience or public opinion upon the consciences
of employers, acting partly through the organs of the press, clubs, and
other vehicles of expression, as well as through non-political public
institutions, and corporate bodies of various kinds, especially and more
directly through the Church, and also indirectly through the schools.
Without family and patriarchal protection, without the protection
afforded by civil morality and religious sentiment, Labour Protection,
in its strict sense, working through the State alone, would be able to
effect little.
Family and patriarchal protection outweigh therefore in importance all
more modern forms of Labour Protection, and will always continue to be
the most efficacious. The protection of the Church has always been
powerful from the earliest times.
Self-help and mutual help, moral and religious, effect much that
State-protection could not in general effect, and therefore it is not to
be supposed that they could be dispensed with. But they must not be
included in Labour Protection, strictly so called, for this only
includes protection of labour by the State, and indeed only a part even
of this (cf. 3).
(3) For instance, Labour Protection does not include all judicial and
administrative protection extended by the State to the wage-labourer,
but only such special or extraordinary protection as is directed against
the dangers arising from service relations, and is administered through
special, extraordinary organs, judicial, legislative and representative.
This special protection has become necessary through the development of
the factory system with its merciless exploitation of wage-labour, and
through the weakening of the patriarchal relations in workshops and in
handicrafts. In this respect Labour Protection is the special modern
development of the protection of labour by the State.
Labourers and employers alike are guaranteed an extensive protection of
life, health, morality, freedom, education, culture, and so on, by the
ordinary protective agencies of justice and of police, exercised
impartially towards all citizens, and claimed by all as their right.
Long before there was any talk of Labour Protection, in the modern sense
of the term, this kind of protection existed for wage-labour as against
employers. But in the strict sense of the term Labour Protection
includes only the special protection which extends beyond this ordinary
sphere, the special exercise of State activity on behalf of labourers.
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