LAVORO

LABOR. — Labor is, in historical order, the second factor of production: it is first in dignity and importance. It may be defined as conscious and orderly activity directed toward a desired end. Christianity makes of labor not only a necessary means of providing for physical life, but a most powerful element in the perfecting of man. The substantial influence exerted by Christianity on labor can be effectively traced through the most salient periods of history.

OUTLINE: I. Dignity of Labor — II. Division of Labor — III. The Right to Labor — IV. Rights of Labor

I. DIGNITY OF LABOR

1. Labor in Antiquity

Some voices in the classical Greco-Roman world had extolled labor (cf., e.g., Hesiod, Works and Days, vv. 208–321; Virgil, Georgics and Eclogues, passim). But in the general conception, manual labor was held in contempt, and material occupations were regarded objectively as something degrading and shameful; subjectively, for those who engaged in them, they were a sign of inferiority, understandable only in those born to such a state (slaves) or in those who had lost their civic independence. And just as in man the body, by the order of nature, must serve the spirit, so in society those who attend to material occupations must be completely subject to the dominion of those who pursue spiritual activities. These alone are the masters, the citizens, the free, the property owners; the others are slaves, things and instruments. In this sense, Plato (Republic, VI, 54; Laws, V, VII, VIII), Aristotle (Politics, III, 3; IV, 13; V, 2; VII, 8), and Xenophon (Oeconomicus, IV) had formulated their thought. Cicero, surveying various trades, concluded with this severe judgment: “Opifices omnes in sordida arte versantur; nec enim quidquid ingenuum habere potest officina” (cf. De Officiis, I, 42).

2. At the Origins of Christianity

In Christianity, labor received its finest rehabilitation. The whole Gospel unfolds in the world of labor, and the evangelical message is a message of redemption for the worker. The dignity of man is not to be measured by what he possesses, but by the intrinsic dignity that comes from the very fact that he is a man. Universal equality follows, because all are children of the same Father, oriented toward the same end, which is possession of Him. Hence arises a natural and instinctive aspiration to social justice in all men; in the light of these principles, questions of lawfulness, justice, and charity arise in the economic sphere. Labor is a law that binds all to procure the necessities of existence, and to it must correspond a just wage (Lk 10:7: “the laborer deserves his hire”; Mt 10:10); idleness is to be condemned (cf. the parable of the talents, ibid., 25:30). Labor, however, is not only an economic factor, but also a means of redemption and forgiveness, a source of elevation (Jn 6:27).

In the teaching of the Apostles, some testimonies of St. Paul are particularly significant: “For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not idle when we were with you, and we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not burden any of you. It is not that we have not this right, but to give you in our conduct an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: If any one will not work, let him not eat. For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work in quietness and to earn their own living” (2 Thess 3:7–13; cf. also Acts 20:33–35; Eph 4:28). The right to just wages is also the object of the Apostles’ preaching. St. James in his letter exclaims that the wages withheld from laborers cry out to God for vengeance (Jas 5:4; cf. also 1 Cor 9:7–14). The law of rest, affirmed alongside that of labor, finds its expression in Sunday, which, succeeding the Jewish Sabbath, becomes a day of freedom and religious fraternity.

Even in post-apostolic catechesis, among the Fathers, Christianity continues its work of social redemption through labor. Labor is not in itself a penalty due to original sin, for even in the Earthly Paradise, in the state of original justice, man would have worked (cf. Gen 2:15; original sin adds to labor the burden of toil (ibid., 3:19: “In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread”), which, when united to the Passion of Christ, becomes an element of redemption (cf. St. John Chrysostom, Hom. on Jn, 36, 2; PG 59, 206).

The economist evaluates labor from the standpoint of immediate material yield, while the Christian evaluates it from the standpoint of final yield: labor is thus brought back to theology. Only labor that involves immorality is forbidden to the Christian, and the first Fathers of the Church drew up a list of such occupations; but the majority of employments fall within the moral law. “Take care in agriculture, if you are a farmer, but know God while you till the fields. Sail also, if you are devoted to navigation, but invoke the heavenly Pilot” (Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus X; PG 8, 216). Thus labor becomes a norm of asceticism in monastic practice both in the East and in the West (St. Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. 91, 2–3: PL 37, 1173). Prayer and labor become, in the Fathers, a motto expressing the ideal of Christian life. The condition of worker is therefore not a cause for shame, but for pride. In this sense, Origen answers the pagan philosopher Celsus, who had mocked the Christians because Jesus had been a worker, the son of a woman “who was a poor laborer” (cf. Origen, Contra Celsum, I, 28–29: PG 11, 714–15). Oppression, abuse, and every form of exploitation of labor are condemned by the Fathers of the Church, who remind masters of the limits of their power and at the same time instill in servants an awareness of their own freedom (cf. St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catecheses, 15, 23: PG 33, 902). Thus, in Christian families, the emancipation of servants is inculcated and widely practiced out of love for Christ. Without overturning the existing juridical framework, the person is rebuilt within the individual so that structures may then be rebuilt; liberation is not effected outwardly until souls capable of living with responsibility and dignity have been forged.

3. In the Middle Ages

Christianity continues its work in the Middle Ages when, in the agrarian economy, serfs succeed slaves. Three fundamental rights were recognized for them: to their own life, to a lawful marriage, and to the fruit of their labor. They were, however, indissolubly bound to the land. The dignity of the human person demanded further recognition, and Christianity did not fail to provide it, beginning with Pope Gregory the Great (590–604), who, through extensive action more than through writings, delineated the Christian concept of landed property and urged owners to regard themselves as papal stewards and dispensers of God (cf. H. Grisar, S. Gregorio Magno, Rome 1928, pp. 326–36). It was, in embryo, the Christian system of property later elaborated by the great masters of Scholasticism, especially St. Thomas Aquinas (cf. Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 66, a. 2).

In the sphere of industrial and commercial economy, guilds took shape as a typical expression of the Christian spirit in their triple character as economic, political, and religious bodies. Contemporary economic historiography has highlighted the remarkable achievements to which medieval guilds gave rise in the creation of manual works and in the establishment of fraternal solidarity among workers (v. CORPORATIONS).

4. In the modern echo

The modern era is marked, in the economic sphere, by the separation of capital from labour, with the resulting configuration of a socio-economic order in which capital has come to prevail over labour (v. CAPITALISM). From this reaction arises the class-materialist theory. Between these two opposing conceptions, Christianity raised its voice to safeguard the rights of the human person of the worker through the movement of Catholic thinkers, which, in the first half of the century, originated in the Christian-social school, and above all through the papal magisterium in the social field, particularly that of Leo XIII (Rerum novarum), Pius XI (Quadragesimo anno), and Pius XII (radio messages and discourses: cf. Le encicliche sociali dei Papi da Pio IX a Pio XII, edited by I. Giordani, 4th ed., Rome 1948).

According to Christian ethics:
a) Labour has two fundamental properties: it is personal and necessary. From these stem, as consequent corollaries, the entire doctrine on labour (cf. Pius XII’s radio message for the 50th anniversary of Rerum novarum: AAS, 33 [1941], pp. 195 ff.);
b) Labour has primacy over capital. Therefore, the equation of labour with a commodity, typical of economic liberalism, and the materialist collectivist theory, which enslave labour to private capitalism and state capitalism respectively, must be rejected (cf. radio messages of Christmas 1942 and 1 Sept. 1944: ibid., 35 [1943], p. 9 ff.; 36 [1944], p. 249 ff.);
c) Labour must unfold with full respect for the rights of the human person, fostering, through adequate legislation, its physical development (with hygienic surroundings, reasonable hours, proportionate rest, protection of women and children, etc.), intellectual development (not reducing man to a machine, dehumanizing him with inhuman techniques), and moral development (not making virtue more difficult; cf. encyclicals Rerum novarum and Quadragesimo anno: I. Giordani, op. cit.);
d) Labour constitutes both an obligation (universal moral law) and a right, because it is an indispensable means of procuring what is necessary for life. This is not derived from the State, but is based on the natural right of every person (cf. radio messages for the 50th anniversary of Rerum novarum and Christmas 1942: AAS, 33 [1941], p. 195 ff.; 35 [1943], p. 9 ff.);
e) Labour requires a wage adequate to social justice, i.e., sufficient to meet the economic necessities of food, clothing, housing, and honest recreation—not only for the individual but for the family (family wage); it must ensure the fundamental requirements of social security and provide the opportunity for gradual access to private property (cf. Rerum novarum, Quadragesimo anno, radio messages for the 50th anniversary of Rerum novarum, 10 June 1941, and Christmas 1942, in which labour is indicated as one of the five fundamental points required for the internal order of States: I. Giordani, op. cit.; AAS, 33 [1941], p. 195 ff.; 35 [1943], p. 9 ff.);
f) The wage contract, if it respects the above principles, is not unjust; however, under present social conditions, it should be tempered by the partnership contract, overcoming the dualism between capital and labour and establishing collaboration;
g) Workers must be recognized the right to unite in free associations to defend their interests against various resistances (cf. encyclicals Rerum novarum, Quadragesimo anno, and the address to the A.C.L.I. on 1 March 1945: I. Giordani, op. cit.; AAS, 37 [1945], p. 68);
h) The State has the right and duty to take positive action in the economic sphere, not to absorb or replace private initiative or that of free associations, but to supplement, direct, coordinate, and stimulate in view of the common good and the complex of conditions by which individuals may achieve the integral development of their personality. Indeed, for this purpose, international economic cooperation must be established (cf. encyclicals Rerum novarum, Quadragesimo anno, and radio messages for the 50th anniversary of Rerum novarum, Christmas 1939, 1941, and 1942: I. Giordani, op. cit.; AAS, 32 [1940], p. 5 ff.; 33 [1941], p. 195; 34 [1942], p. 5 ff.; 35 [1943], p. 5 ff.);
i) The path to be followed in implementing these principles of the ethics of labour is not revolution, but peaceful and harmonious evolution (cf. radio message of 13 June 1943).

II. Division of Labour

I. Various distinctions

The common idea of labour is that which flourished in the climate of mechanistic positivism: an expenditure of energy conditioned by output. An imperfect and incomplete idea, which, however, fits with a certain obviousness manual labour rather than intellectual labour; upon it are founded Marxist-type theories regarding labour and workers.

The vulgar distinction between manual and intellectual labour is simplistic and misleading. Such qualifications apply only to the extreme points of a continuous series of complex forms, which already are, and increasingly will become, ingenious combinations of physical and intellectual labour in the most varied proportions. Manual labour that requires no contribution of the mind is no less exceptional than intellectual labour that can be prepared, carried out, and resolved in pure and comfortable meditation.

The distinction between servile and free labour is, however, legitimate: the former lacks the qualities of freedom, initiative, originality, and noble passion that, to varying degrees, are manifested in the latter, rendering it a typical expression of the worker’s personality. From this perspective, even intellectual labour can be servile.

Another valid and substantial distinction is that between useful, or productive, labour and useless or unproductive labour: for it is only utility—even when understood in the broadest and most complete sense—that confers value upon labour and legitimises its worth and remuneration. The decisive criterion can only be this: labour is useful, i.e., productive, when, as a result of it, life is enriched with well-being, with necessary things that satisfy real needs, or with services, ideas, knowledge, new possibilities for useful labour, new capacities, or at least reduced suffering.

Any labour may be poorly productive if performed with little spirit and scant diligence; more readily, for intrinsic reasons, labour of a bureaucratic nature in general, intermediary and parasitic labour, and that devoted to the services of advertising and entertainment, journalism, the press, trade unionism, and politics may become so. Even much labour that appears to be industrial in character may in reality be unproductive and even harmful, fostering luxury consumption, bureaucratic necessities, and war.

Yet the phenomenon that today seems to constitute the foundation and necessary condition of all civil progress concerns the division and specialisation of labour’s aims and actions. Nature itself provides a first great specialisation of tasks through pre-existing circumstances and the variety of intelligences, temperaments, and aptitudes; thus arise entrepreneurs, merchants, technicians, soldiers, politicians, officials, skilled workers, and so on. But every activity, already thus oriented, is then exercised and concretised within a limited sector of production.

The phenomenon of exchange, in which equivalent or deemed equivalent utilities are exchanged, naturally leads each party to offer types of products or services that, while holding value for the other party, cost the offerer less effort. This lesser effort may derive from the availability of cheap raw materials, from knowledge of more efficient production processes, or finally from particular skill, ability, and dexterity in production. Each person therefore devotes himself particularly, if not exclusively, to a given kind of commodity or service, or to a specific part of a product or phase of a service. The division of labour is the cause of a growing productivity of labour itself, inasmuch as the efficacy of effort and the perfection of organisation are achieved more swiftly and thoroughly when pursued within a limited sector of productive labour, refining the skills necessary to perform II.
Progress, which accelerates the pace of exchanges, widens their scope, and increases their difficulties, drives towards an ever-greater division and specialisation of productive labour, which has become an essential law of technical, economic, and social progress—upon which are dependent both the quantitative increase in production and the improvement in quality, as well as the reduction in prices. Yet the coin has its reverse side, for the specialisation of labour leads to narrow visions of reality, hence to misunderstandings, rivalries, and egoisms exacerbated by mass production, which raises the problems of selling and competition. Hence, to a large extent, the profound anxieties of modern life, like centrifugal forces destined to disintegrate every fruitful capacity for synthesis and every human solidarity. These forces must be neutralised by antagonistic centripetal forces that restore unity to partial visions and individual efforts: foremost among these is intelligent charity, followed by a homogeneous moral formation of individuals and a profound rational organisation of exchanges based on the concentration of services (v. SCAMBIO).

2. Labour as a Commodity

Today, the concept—attributed to liberal economics—that labour would be equated with a commodity, in disregard of its human and spiritual value, has drawn bitter criticism. The resentment is justified, as has been said; yet the forum in which it is sought to be asserted is not the appropriate one. As long as labour is offered and demanded with the price negotiated, and economics is the science of contract, labour will be valued, in the economic sphere, solely for its economic utility, to the extent recognised by the market. Supplementary forms of fixed wages are already widely adopted (v. SALARIO), but always within the framework and measure of productivity.

A full appreciation of labour, one that also—and principally—takes into account its human and spiritual value, and adequately compensates what it contains of creative force and contribution to universal happiness, of civil example and spiritual torment, lies beyond earthly possibilities: if a supplementary and complementary compensation can and must be achieved, this will occur through other authorities and in a forum other than the strictly economic. Thus, it is through different avenues and by means other than economic ones that the prices of labour can be corrected with respect to the judgment expressed by the market—unless one accepts the burdens and risks of enterprise. More than a problem of distributive justice, it may well be a matter of morality and virtue.

### III. THE RIGHT TO LABOUR
#### 1. Existence of the Right
Since labour is a natural law, a moral duty, and an economic necessity, reason and justice require that every capable individual be recognised the fundamental right to work usefully, receiving the just and maximum price for his labour, without the social organisation imposing any impossibilities or difficulties and resistances that in practice amount to the same. This is the right to labour: an elementary right, before which society reveals its greatest preparedness and gravest uncertainty.

There is no lack of useful labour that is needed, even urgently: indeed, it is in overwhelming abundance in the world, so great are humanity’s ancient and new needs, and so many arise continually with the advance of civilisation. There is no lack of workers available in staggering numbers; nor do the necessary capital funds fail, if one considers the immense masses of savings seeking investment or squandered on useless works or war. Yet the effective means to coordinate these productive elements is still unknown, so as to guarantee dignified and fruitful employment to all individuals and sufficient production to secure that minimum of tranquillity which is the basis of social peace (v. SICUREZZA SOCIALE).

#### 2. Historical Affirmation of the Right
The right to labour is first affirmed in Locke, for whom the need to work necessarily implies in man the right to be able to work. In Adam Smith, it is found among those constituting “natural liberty.” It is reaffirmed by Montesquieu and Rousseau, declared in an edict of 1776 by Turgot, minister to Louis XVI and one of the leading Physiocrats; and then repeatedly during the French Revolution, in decrees of the Constituent Assembly, the Legislative Chamber, and the Convention. Yet for all it remained a doctrinal assertion.

The German philosopher Fichte, in his *Naturrecht* first, and later in *Der Geschlossene Handelsstaat*, derived an obligation for the State (1800); and after him, Winkelblech, Lassalle, and Menger. In France, the sanctionists became its champions, while in England, the Chartists—hostile to the introduction of machines—championed II. Finally, Karl Marx and Louis Blanc: the latter’s *ateliers sociaux*, established in Paris during the 1848 revolution, did not prosper.

After this, the right to work fell into oblivion due to the difficulty of applying it in concrete forms; it reappeared in encyclicals and papal messages of recent decades and was included in the political programs of parties and in democratic and socialist constitutions. The *Code Social de Malines* vaguely alludes to II.
3. **Concretization of the Right.** — Evidently, it still remains within the realm of doctrine, lacking even a practical vision of the principle of concrete realization: perhaps because it has always been sought where it could not be found, namely in collective action and in the economic policies of States.

Social and political difficulties certainly exist, but solely because economic difficulties exist: one difficulty alone, perhaps, lies at the root of all others, already recognized by all schools, which denounced it both in the clear propositions of the classical economists like J. B. Say, and in the more convoluted ones of the romantics like Müller and List, as well as in the invectives of Proudhon and the reproaches of the precursor of socialism, Sismondi. Some have blamed the nature of things, others intrusive politics, others still the disorganized regime of civil society, or the continuous theft perpetrated by a privileged class against other classes. Yet these are all digressions before the common and persistent inability to resolve, in the practical field of exchanges, the anomaly by which humanity cannot purchase all that it can, or even more, produce.

What is needed, evidently, is to perfect the organization of exchange to the same degree that scientific and technical progress perfects the organization of production. What is needed is to resolve the bottleneck by which products stagnate in markets because they do not easily find buyers at remunerative prices. In other words, it is necessary to raise the “demand” for products and services to the level of “supply.”

From another perspective, it is necessary to increase the purchasing power of the working masses, which remains far below their productive capacity. Demagoguery, simplistic and crude, points to wage increases as an obvious remedy; but this remedy is worthless if, at the same time, the two causes of the depreciation of labor are not reduced: the colossal mass of useless labor, poorly remunerated at the expense of useful labor, and the defective mobility and transformability of capital, which is not ready to flow with the necessary speed, in the necessary measure, and at a reasonable cost to where productive effort would require II.
These two causes constitute, in essence, a single one: because bureaucratic and parasitic hypertrophy (commercial, state, union, and military) arises, thrives, and prospers on economic difficulties, particularly on the scarcity of capital and the myriad obstacles to production and exchange. Experience teaches that the scarcer the products, the more people must be mobilized to distribute them; the poorer a population, the more complex the bureaucracy that governs it; the greater the disorder in the market, the more shameless and bizarre trades flourish that live off the disorder. Fleeting issues—dynastic, national pride, race, social regimes, and political opinions—gain life and virulence solely from the preexistence of impeded exchanges, invincible or feared competition, and financial hegemonies.

Given that the essential elements for the full realization of the right to work exist, the question appears to be solely one of organization—not in the sense of centralizing directive functions, but in promoting and developing the natural autonomism that derives from spontaneous compliance with economic laws, when these are well understood and their utilitarian aspect is made evident through the perfection of contractual instruments, easy access to markets, and the stability of the purchasing power of money. This is the truly scientific criterion that liberal schools have vainly attempted, and that today the Christian social school and democratic schools are attempting, though they remain uncertain before the equally numerous prospects of planned and directed economies; while socialist and communist schools place the State as the supreme regulator and disposer of economic activity, in disregard of human freedom, reason, and true science.

Unfortunately, in the face of this greatest—if not the only—problem of social life, minds prefer to draw inspiration from political art and to hope more in the capacities of bureaucracies and in reasonable transformations of social structures than in the perfection of technical means to determine and foster the meeting of initiatives, labor, and capital. Such means are, first and foremost, freedom and education, then vocational training, new productive processes, the insurance and circulation of savings, and a more perfect organization of exchanges and markets (v. SAVINGS; EXCHANGE).

Small steps in this direction, attempts more episodic than systematic, can be seen in the Marshall Plan, in Truman’s Point IV for depressed areas, and in theories that go under the generic name of Keynesianism (v. KEYNES); but we are still in the realm of empiricism, lacking an organic and scientific vision of what a rational economic order might be, in which alone the right to work will find its full and practical recognition.

IV. THE RIGHT TO WORK. — Understood in an economic sense (a presupposition of the juridical sense), labor may be considered as the exercise of human faculties directed toward the production of wealth, i.e., the performance of an activity materially exchangeable.

Thus, labor involves the simultaneous concurrence of physical-organic and psychic (intellectual: reason; moral: will) faculties, which are essentially common to all men, though concretely varying greatly in degree and manner. Indeed, physical effort is always necessary to subjugate the external world and material forces; but this effort does not achieve its intended purpose unless governed by a directing mind, nor does anyone endure the sacrifice of arduous labor unless a voluntary act intervenes to overcome natural repugnance. Labor is therefore a physical-organic effort, ordered and directed by the intellect toward a concrete end and translated into action by the command of the will. Hence, human activity and its results bear a spiritual imprint, as expressions not of determinism, but of rational and free energies.

It should be noted at the outset that there are activities that are legally irrelevant and others that, while legally relevant, fall outside the scope of study proper to this discipline within the current general system of law. Irrelevant, for example, is the activity that does not transcend the interests and needs of the acting subject; relevant, on the other hand, is the activity that involves the establishment of a relationship between multiple subjects, when this 1. is exercised in favor of a subject distinct from the acting one. But even in this case, the position of the 1. can assume very varied aspects. As has been precisely observed, if the right of the 1. were to be understood in the broadest sense, as that which governs all relationships in which the human element in some way enters, it would dissolve into the indeterminate. To arrive at a technical clarification, it is necessary to delimit the object so as to give it a concrete legal form. We shall now examine some marginal criteria.

The proper object or subject matter is the relationship of 1. as an economic exchange relationship, in which a subject (worker) obligates himself, by virtue of (at least normally

and therefore at the highest level of the hierarchy of sources in a system with a rigid constitution); others are newly formulated, entrusting to subsequent laws the task of specifying and developing them.

In particular, the worker has the right: 1) to remuneration proportional to the quantity and quality of his 1., in any case sufficient to ensure for himself and his family a free and dignified existence; 2) to the fixing of a maximum daily working hours; 3) to weekly rest; 4) to paid leave (art. 36; V. CONTRATTO DI LAVORO; SALARIO).

To the particular substantive regulation of labor relations, there appropriately corresponds a special procedural discipline, aimed at making the judgment more rapid, simple, and economical compared to ordinary proceedings, and also at constituting a judging body suited to know and resolve labor disputes in an appropriate manner. A significant contribution to the development of this new branch of law has been made, in the past, by the labor courts (established in 1893) and the private employment commissions (established in 1916). To say nothing of other institutions, during the Fascist period the labor magistracy (a section of the court of appeal composed of a mixed panel of magistrates and expert citizens) gained considerable importance for resolving collective disputes, both legal (on the interpretation of collective contracts with erga omnes effect) and economic (on the issuance of new norms or the revision of existing contractual norms), in connection with the prohibition of self-help by producers, i.e., the criminal prosecution of strikes and lockouts. The new constitutional charter, however, configures the strike as a right (exercisable within the framework of the laws that regulate it, art. 40); nor does the lockout (although it does not have an equal proclamation) seem, according to the preferable but contested opinion, to be further considered a crime, but rather to fall within the realm of the legally permissible. The resolution of collective disputes is no longer envisaged, nor could special magistracies be established for this purpose, nor could compulsory arbitration be imposed, at least for those categories to which the aforementioned right to strike is recognized. However, highly appropriate could be special conciliation and mediation offices, existing in many countries, avoiding the constant recourse to the Ministry of Labor. This matter may perhaps be regulated in the future; for now, the provisions of the Civil Procedure Code of 1942 on individual disputes remain in force, with some minor modifications. The special procedure does not constitute a distinct system from the ordinary one, because most of the rules that previously formed its content have been extended to common proceedings; however, some particular provisions remain (among other things regarding the broader powers of the judge in evidence-gathering, legal representation, appeals, etc.), which apply before the special sections (always composed solely of magistrates) of the preturas and tribunals (in the first instance, depending on the value of the dispute) and the courts of appeal (in the second instance) for disputes relating to: 1) labor or employment relationships that are or may be regulated by collective contracts; 2) sharecropping, equal-share tenancy, and leasehold for direct cultivators; 3) labor and employment relationships of employees of public bodies, organized by trade associations (according to the teaching of the Court of Cassation, in dissent from the Council of State); 4) labor relationships of employees of public bodies that are not assigned by law to another judge. In matters of social insurance, the competent court in the first instance is the tribunal (and the port captaincies for disputes concerning maritime labor).

Another aspect of labor law is its international dimension, of great relevance for countries with significant emigration like Italy. Provisions in this regard are sometimes found in treaties of commerce and navigation on legal and judicial protection, in emigration conventions in general, and in particular in specific labor treaties (or for special institutions, e.g., accident insurance, etc.) between certain States or in multilateral conventions usually open to subsequent accessions. The international labor organization has greatly contributed to the development of these latter (v. the relevant entry, V. also on the entire subject: LEGISLAZIONE SOCIALE; PROTEZIONE DEI LAVORATORI).