WORK. - Labor is, in the historical order, the second factor of production: it is the first in dignity and importance. It can be defined as conscious and ordered activity directed toward a result to be obtained. 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 exercised by Christianity on labor can be effectively indicated in the most salient periods of history.
I. DIGNITY OF WORK
1. L. in antiquity
There had not been lacking in the classical Greco-Roman world some voice exalting l. (cf., for example, Hesiod, Works and Days, vv. 298-321; Virgil, Georgics and Bucolics, passim). But in the general conception manual l. was regarded with contempt and material occupations objectively as something base and infamous; subjectively, for those who practiced them, they were a sign of inferiority, understandable only in one who had been born into such a state (slaves) or in one who had lost his civic independence. And just as in man the body must, by the order of nature, serve the spirit, so in society those who attend to material occupations must subject themselves completely to the dominion of those who carry on spiritual activities. These alone are the domini, the cives, the liberi, the property owners; the others are slaves, res et instrumenta. In this sense Plato (Republic, VI, 54; Laws, V, VII, VIII), Aristotle (Politics, III, 3; IV, 13; V, 2; VII, 8) and Xenophon (Economics, IV) had formulated their thought. Cicero, reviewing the various trades, had concluded with this severe pronouncement: « 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 l. received its best rehabilitation. The whole Gospel moves in the world of l.; and the evangelical message is a message of redemption for the worker. The dignity of man must not be fixed by what he possesses, but by the intrinsic dignity that comes to him from the very fact that he is a man. Universal equality therefore, because all are children of the same Father, oriented toward the same end, which is the possession of him. Hence the aspiration to social justice is natural and instinctive in all men; in the light of these principles there arise in the economic field problems of lawfulness, of justice, of charity. L. is a law that obliges everyone, in order to procure the necessities of existence, and to it there must therefore be corresponding a just wage (Lk. 10, 7: «the laborer is worthy of his hire»; Mt. 10, 10); idleness is to be condemned (cf. the parable of the talents, ibid., 25, 30). L., however, is not only an economic factor, but at the same time a means of redemption and of forgiveness, a source of elevation (Jn. 6, 27).
In the teaching of the Apostles some testimonies of St. Paul are particularly significant: «And when we were with you, we gave you this command: if anyone will not work, neither shall he eat. But we hear that some of you are living in idleness, doing nothing. Now to such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ that they eat their bread, working quietly». (II Thess. 3, 7-13; cf. also Acts 20, 33-35; Eph. 4, 28). The right to a just wage is also the object of the Apostles' preaching. St. James in his letter exclaims that the wage defrauded from the workers cries out to God for vengeance (Jas. 5, 4; cf. also I Cor. 9, 7-14). The law of rest, affirmed alongside that of l., has its expression in Sunday, which, having succeeded the Jewish Sabbath, becomes a day of liberty and of religious fraternity.
Also in post-apostolic catechesis, among the Fathers, Christianity continues its work of social redemption of l. It is not in itself a penalty due to original sin, because even in the Earthly Paradise in the state of original justice man would have worked (cf. Gen. 2, 15; original sin added toil to l. (ibid. 3, 19: «You shall eat your bread by the sweat of your brow»), which, if associated with the Passion of Christ, becomes an element of redemption (cf. St. John Chrysostom, In Io. hom., 36, 2: PG 59, 206).
The economist weighs l. from the point of view of immediate material return, the Christian instead from the point of view of the final return: l. is thus brought back to theology. Only l. that implies immorality is forbidden to the Christian, and the first Fathers of the Church draw up a list of such: but the majority of occupations fall within the moral law. «Attend to agriculture, if you are a farmer, but know God while you work the fields. Sail too, if you are devoted to navigation, but invoking the heavenly Pilot». (Clement of Alexandria, Protr., X: PG 8, 216). And so l. becomes a norm of ascesis in monastic practice both in the East and in the West. (St. Augustine, In Ps. 91, 2 and 3: PL 27, 1173). Prayer and l. become among the Fathers a motto that expresses the ideal of Christian life. Not a reason for shame, therefore, does the condition of worker constitute, but of pride. And in this sense Origen responds to the pagan philosopher Celsus, who had mocked the Christians because Jesus had been a workman, the son of a woman «of the countryside, poor and a worker» (cf. Origen, Contra Celsum, I, 28-29: PG 11, 714-15). Hardships, abuses and every form of exploitation of l. are the object of condemnation by the Fathers of the Church, who remind masters of the limits of their powers and at the same time give servants the consciousness of their own freedom (cf. St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis, 15, 23: PG 33, 902). And it is thus that in Christian families the emancipation of servants is inculcated and widely practiced for the love of Christ. Without subverting the existing juridical framework, to rebuild the person in the individual in order then to rebuild the structures; not to liberate externally except after having forged souls capable of living with responsibility and dignity.
3. In the Middle Ages
Christianity works the same teaching when in the Middle Ages in the agrarian economy the «serfs of the glebe» succeed the slaves. To them three fundamental rights were recognized: to their own life, to a legitimate marriage and to possess the fruit of their own l. They were, however, indissolubly bound to the land. The dignity of the human person demanded further recognitions, and Christianity did not fail to provide for them, beginning with Pope Gregory the Great (590-604), who through a vast action, even more than with his writings, outlined the Christian concept of landed property, and stimulated owners to consider themselves as procuratores pauperum and dispensatores Dei (cf. H. Grisar, S. Gregorio Magno, Rome 1928, pp. 326-36). It was, in germ, the Christian system of property later elaborated through the great masters of scholasticism, above all St. Thomas Aquinas (cf. Sum. Theol., 2a-2ae: q. 66, a. 2).
In the sphere of the industrial-commercial economy the guilds gradually took shape, a typical expression of the Christian spirit in their threefold physiognomy of economic, political and religious body. Contemporary economic historiography has brought out how fruitful the medieval guilds were with admirable results in the creations of manual work and in the institutions of fraternal solidarity among workers (v. CORPORAZIONI).
4. In the modern age
The modern epoch is marked in the economic field by the separation of capital from l. with the consequent shaping of an economic-social order in which capital came to prevail over l. (v. CAPITALISMO). Hence, by reaction, the classist-materialist theory. Between these two opposing conceptions Christianity raised its voice in safeguard of the rights of the human person of the worker through the movement of Catholic thinkers, which, having arisen in the first half of the 19th century, gave origin to the Christian-social school, and above all through the pontifical magisterium in the social field, in particular of Leo XIII (Rerum novarum), of Pius XI (Quadragesimo anno), of 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) Work has two fundamental properties: it is personal and necessary. From these, as consequent corollaries, the whole doctrine on work unfolds (cf. Pius XII's radio message for the 50th anniversary of Rerum novarum: AAS, 33 [1941], p. 195 ff.); b) it has preeminence over capital. Therefore the equation work-commodity, proper to economic liberalism, must be rejected, as must the theory of materialist collectivism, which enslaves work to private capitalism and to State capitalism respectively (cf. the radio messages of Christmas 1942 and of Sept. 1, 1944: ibid., 35 [1943], p. 9 ff.; 36 [1944], p. 249 ff.). c) It must be carried out in full respect for the rights of the human person, fostering, through adequate legislation, his physical development (with a hygienic environment, reasonable hours, proportionate rest, protection of women and children, etc.), intellectual development (not reducing man to a machine, depersonalizing him with an inhuman technique) and moral development (not making virtue more difficult; cf. the encyclicals Rerum novarum and Quadragesimo anno: I. Giordani, op. cit.). d) It constitutes an obligation (universal moral law) and a right, because it is an indispensable means of procuring what is necessary for life. This is so not by derivation from the State, but on the basis of the natural right of every person (cf. the radio messages for the 50th anniversary of Rerum novarum and of Christmas 1942: AAS, 33 [1941], p. 195 ff.; 35 [1943], p. 9 ff.). e) Work demands a wage adequate to social justice, that is, such as to allow the satisfaction of the economic necessities of food, clothing, housing and honest recreation, and this not only for the individual but for the family (family wage); which ensures the fundamental requirements of social security and which gives the possibility of a gradual access to private property (cf. Rerum novarum,
Quadragesimo anno, radio messages for the 50th anniversary of Rerum novarum, June 1, 1941, and for Christmas 1942, in which labor 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, provided it respects the principles set out above, is not unjust; however, in today's social conditions it must be tempered by a partnership contract, overcoming the dualism between capital and labor and establishing collaboration. g) Workers must be recognized the right to unite in free associations to protect their own interests in the face of various forms of resistance (cf. encyclicals Rerum novarum, Quadragesimo anno, and the address to the A. C. L. I. of March 1, 1945: I. Giordani, op. cit.; AAS, 37 [1945], p. 68). h) The State has the right and the duty to carry out positive action in the economic field, not in order to absorb or replace private initiative or that of free associations, but in order to supplement, guide, coordinate and stimulate, with a view to the common good, that complex of conditions by virtue of which individual persons can achieve the integral development of their own personality. Indeed, to this end an international economic cooperation must be established (cf. encyclicals Rerum novarum, Quadragesimo anno, and the radio messages for the 50th anniversary of Rerum novarum, and for 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 way to be followed in order to put these principles of the ethics of labor into practice is not revolution, but peaceful and harmonious evolution (cf. radio message of June 13, 1943).
BIBLI: Per l'aspetto storico dei rapporti tra l. e cristianesimo, cf.: S. Talamo, Il cristianesimo ed il l. manuale, Roma 1885; V. Brants, Esquisse des théories économiques professées par les écrivains des XIIIe et XIVe siècles, Lovanio 1895; A. Winterstein, Die sittliche Lehre vom Erdengut nach den Evangelien und apostolischen Schriften, Magonza 1898; M. Sabatier, L'Eglise et le travail manuel, Parigi 1898; J. Weber, Evangelium und Arbeit, Friburgo in Br. 1898; G. Toniolo, Trattato di economia sociale, Introduzione, Firenze 1906, pp. 98-163; I. Seipel, Die wirtschaftsethischen Lehren der Kirchenväter, Vienna 1907; P. Louis, Le travail dans le monde romain, Parigi 1912; V. Boissonade, Le travail dans l'Europe chrétienne au moyen âge, ivi 1921; J. C. Husslein, Biblia and labor, Nuova York 1924; F. Marconcini, L'economia del l., Milano 1926, pp. 57-85; A. Tilgher, Homo faber, Roma 1929; M. Rocha, Travail et salaire à travers la scolastique, Parigi 1933; A. Fanfani, Storia delle dottrine economiche. Il volontarismo, 3ª ed., Milano 1942, pp. 79-146; id., Storia del l. in Italia. Dalla fine del sec. XV agli inizi del XVIII, ivi 1943; id., Cattolicesimo e protestantesimo nella formazione del capitalismo, ivi 1944; F. Marconcini, Rientrare nella società, Varese 1944; L. Dal Pane, Storia del l. in Italia. Dagli inizi del sec. XVIII al 1915, Milano 1944; I. Giordani, Il messaggio sociale di Gesù. I. Gli Evangelii, 5ª ed., ivi 1946, pp. 221-38; II. Gli Apostoli, 2ª ed., ivi 1946, pp. 109-17; III. I primi Padri della Chiesa, 2ª ed., ivi 1947, pp. 199-207; IV. I grandi Padri della Chiesa, ivi 1947, pp. 184-204; A. Lanza, La vita rurale nel Vangelo, in I problemi della vita rurale (Atti della XXI Settimana sociale dei cattolici d'Italia, Napoli 21-29 sett. 1947), Roma 1948, pp. XIX-XXXIX. Per l'aspetto dottrinale dei rapporti tra l. e cristianesimo: P. Pavan, L'ordine sociale, 2ª ed., Roma 1944, pp. 101-10; id., La vita sociale nei documenti pontifici, 2ª ed., Milano 1946, pp. 10-23; Unione intern. di studi sociali, Codice sociale, Roma 1944, pp. 82-112; G. Gonella, Principi di un ordine sociale, ivi 1944, pp. 253-59; Per la comunità cristiana (a cura di un gruppo di studiosi amici di Camaldoli), ivi 1945, pp. 59-85; F. Cimetier, Brève synthèse de théologie morale sociale, Parigi 1945, pp. 78-126; A. Fanfani, Summula sociale, Roma 1945, pp. 115-54; II. I. (Atti della XX Settimana sociale dei cattolici d'Italia, Venezia 14-24 ott. 1946), Roma 1947; J. Haessele, L'etica cristiana del l., trad. it. di A. Miggiano, ivi 1949; G. Thils, Théologie des réalités terrestres, I. Parigi 1949, pp. 185-94; G. B. Guzzetti, Problemi religiosi del l., in La scuola cattolica, 77 (1949), pp. 3-16; L. Leypaert, Nature et noblesse du travail, in Res. diocés. de Tournai, 4 (1949), pp. 193-213.
Pio Menoni
II. DIVISION OF WORK
1. Various distinctions
The current idea of labor is the one that flourished in the climate of mechanistic positivism: an expenditure of energy conditioned by a yield. An imperfect and incomplete idea, which nevertheless fits with a certain obviousness manual labor rather than intellectual labor; upon it are founded the Marxist-type theories concerning labor and workers.
The vulgar distinction between manual and intellectual labor is simplistic and misleading. Such qualifications apply only to the extreme tips of a continuous series of complex forms, which already are, and will increasingly become, ingenious combinations of physical labor and intellectual labor in the most varied proportions. A manual labor that requires no contribution of the mind is no less exceptional than an intellectual labor that can be prepared, carried out and resolved in pure and comfortable meditation.
Legitimate, on the other hand, is the distinction between servile labor and free labor: the former lacking the qualities of freedom, initiative, originality and noble passion, which in varying degrees manifest themselves in the latter, making it a typical expression of the worker's personality. From this point of view, even intellectual labor can be servile.
Another permissible and substantial distinction is that between useful, or productive, labor and useless or unproductive labor: because only usefulness, understood too in the broadest and most complete sense, confers value on labor, and legitimizes its worth and its compensation. The discriminating criterion can only be this: useful, that is productive, is that labor after which, and as a consequence of which, life remains enriched with well-being, with necessary things that satisfy real needs, or with services, ideas, knowledge, new possibilities of useful labor, new capacities, or at least fewer sufferings.
Scarcely productive can be any labor, if performed with scant spirit and scant diligence: more easily, for obvious intrinsic reasons, bureaucratic labor in general can become so, as can intermediary and parasitic labor, and that devoted to the services of advertising and entertainment, of journalism, of the press, of trade unionism and of politics. Even much labor, which nevertheless bears typically industrial aspects, can in reality be unproductive and even harmful, feeding luxury consumption, bureaucratic necessities and war.
But the phenomenon that today seems to constitute the basis and the necessary condition of every civilized progress concerns a division and specialization of the purposes and of the action of labor. Nature already provides for a first great specialization of tasks, through pre-existing factual situations and the variety of intelligences, temperaments and aptitudes; thus entrepreneurs, merchants, technicians, soldiers, politicians, officials, specialized workers, etc., are born. But every activity, already thus oriented, is then exercised and concretized upon a limited sector of production.
The phenomenon of exchange, in which equivalent utilities, or those held to be such, are bartered, naturally drives each of the contracting parties to offer types of products or services which, while possessing value for the other contracting party, cost the offerer less toil. Such lesser toil can derive from the availability of cheap raw materials, from knowledge of production processes of greater yield, or finally from particular capacity, skill and dexterity in producing. Each one therefore devotes himself particularly, if not indeed exclusively, to a given kind of merchandise or service, or to a determined part of a product or phase of a service. The division of labor is the cause of an increasing yield of labor itself, inasmuch as the efficacy of the effort and the perfection of the organization are attained more swiftly and more profoundly if sought in a limited sector of productive labor, refining the abilities necessary to accomplish it.
Progress, which accelerates the rhythm of exchanges, broadens their field and increases their difficulties, drives toward an increasing division and specialization of productive labor, which has become an essential law of technical, economic and social progress, to which are linked both the quantitative increase of production, and the improvement of quality, and the reduction of prices. The coin, however, has its reverse side, since the specialization of labor leads to narrow visions of realities, hence to misunderstandings, rivalries and egoisms, exacerbated by mass production which poses the problems of selling and of competition. Whence, to a large extent, the profound anxieties of modern life, as from centrifugal forces destined to disintegrate every fruitful faculty of synthesis and every human solidarity. Such forces must be neutralized by antagonistic centripetal forces, which lead back to unity the partial visions and efforts of individuals: intelligent charity in the first place, then a homogeneous moral formation of individuals and a profound organizational rationality of exchanges based on the concentration of services (v. SCAMBIO).
2. Labor as merchandise
Harsh criticisms today gather around the concept, attributed to liberal economics, according to which labor would be equated with a merchandise, in contempt of its human and spiritual value. The resentment, as has been said, is just; not equally proper, however, is the seat in which one claims to assert it. As long as labor is offered and demanded by negotiating its price, and economics is the science of contract, labor will be appraised, in the economic sphere, solely for its economic utility, to the extent recognized by the market. Integrative forms of the fixed wage are already widely adopted (v. SALARIO), but always within the framework and the measure of productivity.
A total appraisal of labor, which takes account also and principally of its human and spiritual value, and adequately compensates whatever in it is creative force and contribution to universal happiness, of civil example and of torment of soul, exceeds earthly possibilities: if a supplementary and complementary compensation can and must be obtained, this will be by other authorities and in a seat different from the strictly economic one. It is therefore by different ways and with means different from economic ones that the prices of labor 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 is perhaps a question of morals and of virtue.
III. THE RIGHT TO LABOR
1. Existence of the right
Labor being a natural law, a moral duty and an economic necessity, reason and justice require that every able individual be recognized the fundamental right to be able to work usefully, receiving the just and maximum price of his labor, without the social organization opposing to him impossibilities of any kind, or difficulties and resistances that practically amount to them. In this consists the right to labor: an elementary right, before which society gives proof of the greatest unpreparedness and the gravest uncertainty.
There is no lack of useful, demanded, and even urgent labor: indeed, it exists in overflowing quantity in the world, so many are the old and new necessities of humanity, and so many continually arise with the progress of civilization. There is no lack of available workers, and in impressive quantity; the capital needed to set them to work is not wanting, if only one looks at the very large masses of savings in search of investments, or squandered on useless works or on war. Nevertheless, the effective means is not yet known for coordinating these productive elements, with the aim of guaranteeing a worthy and fruitful occupation to all individuals, and a production sufficient to ensure that minimum of tranquility which is the basis of social peace (v. SICUREZZA SOCIALE).
2. Historical affirmation of the right
The right to work is affirmed for the first time 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 again among those constituting "natural liberty." It is reaffirmed later by Montesquieu and Rousseau, is declared in an edict of 1776 by Turgot, minister of Louis XVI and one of the foremost among the physiocrats; and then, repeatedly, during the French Revolution, in decrees of the Constituent Assembly, the Legislative Assembly and the Convention. But for everyone it remained a doctrinal affirmation.
The German philosopher Fichte, first in his Naturrecht and then in the Geschlossene Handelsstaat, derived from it an obligation for the State (1800); and after him Winkelblech, Lassalle and Menger. In France the Saint-Simonians became its champions; in England it was advocated by the Chartists, hostile to the introduction of machines. Finally Karl Marx and Louis Blanc: the ateliers sociaux of the latter, established in Paris during the revolution of 1848, were not successful.
After this the right to work fell into oblivion, because of the difficulty of applying it in concrete forms; it reappeared in the encyclicals and pontifical messages of recent decades, and was included in the political programs of parties and in democratic and socialist constitutions. The Social Code of Malines alludes to it vaguely.
3. Concrete realization of the right
Evidently we have not yet emerged from the doctrinal field, since there is lacking even the practical vision of the principle of concrete realization: perhaps because it has always been sought where it could not be found, that is to say in collective action and in the economic policy of States.
Social and political difficulties certainly exist, but only because economic difficulties exist: a single one, perhaps, which lies at the root of all the others, already known to all schools, which denounced it both in the clear propositions of the classics such as G. B. Say, and in the more convoluted ones of the romantics such as Müller and List, and in the invectives of Proudhon and in the reproaches of the standard-bearer of socialism, Sismondo de' Sismondi. Some have held the nature of things responsible for it, others invasive politics, others again the disorganized regime of civil society, or else the continuous theft by a privileged class to the detriment of the other classes. In every case, however, these are digressions in the face of the common and persistent inability to resolve, on the practical field of exchanges, the anomaly by which humanity cannot manage to buy all that it manages instead, and would manage even more, to produce.
Evidently what is at stake is perfecting the organization of exchange to the same extent that scientific and technical progress manages to perfect the organization of production. What is at stake is resolving the congestion whereby products stagnate in the markets because they do not easily find buyers at remunerative prices. What is at stake, in other words, is raising the "demand" for products and services to the same height as the "supply."
From another point of view, what is at stake is raising the purchasing power of the masses of workers, which has remained too far below their own productive capacity. Demagogy, simplistic and crude, points to higher wages as the obvious remedy: but the remedy is worth nothing if at the same time the two causes of the depreciation of labor are not reduced: the colossal mass of useless labor, lavishly remunerated at the expense of useful labor, and the defective mobility and transformability of capital, which is not ready to rush with the necessary promptness, in the necessary measure and at a suitable cost, to where the productive effort would require it.
The two causes constitute, at bottom, a single one: because bureaucratic and parasitic elephantiasis (commercial, state, trade-union and warlike) is born, grows and prospers on economic difficulties, particularly on the scarcity of capital and on the thousand obstacles to production and exchange. Experience teaches that the scarcer products are, the more people must set themselves in motion to distribute them; the poorer a population is, the more complicated is the bureaucracy that governs it; the more disorder there is in the market, the more strange and brazen trades flourish that live off disorder. Ephemeral questions, dynastic, of national pride, of race, of social regimes and of political opinions, take life and virulence solely from the pre-existence of problems of impeded exchanges, of invincible or feared competitions, of financial hegemonies.
Since the essential elements for an integral 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 that of promoting and developing the natural automatism that derives from spontaneous docility to economic laws, when these are well known and their utilitarian aspect is made evident through the perfection of contractual instruments, easy accessibility to markets and the constancy of the purchasing power of money. This is the truly scientific criterion which, attempted in vain by the liberal schools, is attempted today by the Christian social school and the democratic schools, uncertain however before the alluring prospects of programmed and directed economies: while the socialist and communist schools place the State as supreme regulator and despot of economic activities, in contempt of human freedom, of reason and of true science.
Unfortunately, before this greatest, if not sole, problem of associated life, intelligences prefer to take inspiration from political art, and to hope rather in the capacities of bureaucracies and in the transformations, otherwise reasonable, of social structures, than in the perfecting of technical means, in order to determine and fertilize the meeting of initiatives, of labor and of capital: such means are first of all freedom and education, then professional instruction, new productive processes, the insurance and circulation of savings, a more perfect organization of exchanges and markets (v. RISPARMIO; SCAMBIO).
Small steps in this direction, wavering and of a more episodic than systematic character, are to be seen in the Marshall Plan, in Truman's Point IV on depressed areas, and in the theories that go under the generic name of Keynesianism (v. KEYNES): but we are still in full empiricism, lacking the organic and scientific vision of what a rational ordering of the economy might be, in which alone the right to work will find its full and practical recognition.
Mario Baronci
IV. LAW OF WORK
Understood in the economic sense (the presupposition of the juridical one), labor may be considered as the exercise of human faculties directed immediately to the production of wealth, that is, to the carrying out of an activity materially exchangeable.
There is therefore in labor a simultaneous concurrence of physical-organic and psychic forces or faculties (intellective: reason; moral: will), in their essence common to all men, although in concrete terms in quite varying degrees and modes. Indeed, a physical effort is always necessary to subject the external world and material forces; but this effort does not attain the intended goal unless it is governed by a directing mind, nor does anyone endure the sacrifice of an onerous labor unless an act of will intervenes that overcomes natural repugnances. Labor is therefore a physical-organic effort, ordered and directed by the intellect toward a concrete goal and translated into act by the command of the will. Accordingly, human activity and its results bear a spiritual imprint, as non-deterministic manifestations, but of rational and free energies.
It must be premised that there are activities juridically irrelevant and others that, although relevant, fall outside the proper subject matter of this discipline in the current general system of law. Irrelevant is, for example, the activity that does not transcend the interests and needs of the acting subject; relevant, on the other hand, is the activity that includes the constitution of a relationship among several subjects, that is, when labor is performed in favor of a subject distinct from the one acting. But even in such a case the position of labor can assume very varied aspects. As has been exactly observed, if labor law were to be understood literally, that is, as that law which regulates all relationships into which the element of human labor in some way enters, it would vanish into the indeterminate. To arrive at a technical precision it is necessary to delimit the object so as to obtain a juridical concreteness from it. Certain marginal criteria, however, vary.
The proper object or subject matter is the labor relationship as a relationship of economic exchange, in which one subject (the worker) binds himself, by virtue (at least normally) of a contract, to place his labor energies at the disposal of another subject, the entrepreneur or employer (of the occasion) of labor, who in turn remunerates the former in a measure considered economically equivalent. Modern labor law, however, is not limited to regulating the contract of labor, but also governs institutions and relationships directed to preparing the stipulation of the contract itself or to integrating it in the period following its termination. All this matter falls within the sphere of the aforesaid law, insofar as it always has as its object a relationship of (subordinate) labor, either already in act or in potency (as regards, for example, the organization of employment placement), or terminated as the unfolding of the principal reciprocal performances (performance of labor and remunerative counter-performance) between entrepreneur and worker, but still productive of effects for further performances, always depending on the same relationship (for example, benefits of social insurance, already constituted in the course of and by virtue of the aforesaid relationship).
Labor law, like and even more than other branches of contemporary law (in which the accentuation of social ends appears greater), is constituted by a combination of elements of private law and of public law. The labor relationship is fundamentally, for the private subjects who constitute it, for the satisfaction of their interests on the ground of juridical equality and contractual freedom, a relationship of private law, but it also has a mandatory, non-derogable discipline of public interest (as regards what constitutes the minimum treatment of the worker), limiting, that is, individual freedom for ends of general interest, through the so-called "social legislation." Labor law, considered as a regulator of performances of an economic character, is law of a patrimonial nature, but it is undoubtedly permeated throughout with elements of a personal nature because of the inseparability of the labor performance from the acting person himself, since it is the same subject who, in the exercise of his energies, in some way comes to form the object of the labor relationship and of the juridical availability on the part of the entrepreneur. And it is precisely the subject as such, more than labor in its objectivity, that a part of the legislation in this matter directly targets in its norms, as for the physical and moral protection of workers and especially of minors and women. The personality of the performance then causes the relationship to assume a marked character of fiduciaryness. Because of the indicated aspect of so intense a combination of patrimonial elements and personal elements, labor law has its own particular profile in comparison with other branches of law in which, if not always exclusively, the former (as in rights in rem and of obligation) or the latter (as in family law) clearly prevail.
The various denominations, Italian and foreign, may be reduced to three types, corresponding approximately to three different stages of the discipline. This, at a first moment, was called "industrial law," insofar as there was a special legislation for industry, also in reference to its own labor relationships. When the social protection of workers extended to other branches of production (but limited almost solely to those furnishing manual labor) people spoke of "workers' law." When finally the labor relationship was regulated integrally in all its elements and in reference to all categories, including salaried employees, the terminology of "labor law" was adopted, which has ended up prevailing, understanding by it that branch of (internal) law which regulates the relationships deriving from the contractual performance of (human) labor in (private) enterprises.
Like other contemporary constitutions, the Italian one too has proclaimed principles in matters of labor, in part of more political than juridical value, both for collective relationships (of trade-union law) and for individual ones. Some, relating to the latter (which alone are of interest here), confirm principles already in force (but elevating them to the constitutional plane, and therefore to the highest plane of the hierarchy of sources in a system with a rigid constitution); others are of new enunciation, entrusting to subsequent laws their specification and development.
In particular the worker has the right: 1) to a remuneration proportional to the quantity and quality of his labor, in any case sufficient to assure himself and his family a free and dignified existence; 2) to the fixing of a maximum of daily working hours; 3) to weekly rest; 4) to paid holidays (art. 36; v. CONTRATTO DI LAVORO; SALARIO).
The specific substantive regulation of labor relations is suitably accompanied by a specific procedural regulation, aimed at making the proceedings quicker, simpler and less costly compared with ordinary proceedings, and also at constituting a judging panel adequate to hear and settle labor disputes in a suitable manner. A notable contribution to the development of this new branch of law was made, in the past, by the labor courts for industry (established in 1893) and the commissions for private employment (established in 1916). Not to mention other institutions, during the Fascist period considerable importance was held by the "labor magistracy" (a section of the court of appeal with a mixed composition of magistrates and expert citizens) for the resolution of collective disputes, whether legal (concerning the interpretation of collective contracts with erga omnes effect) or economic (concerning the issuance of new rules or the revision of existing contractual ones), in connection with the prohibition of self-help by producers, that is, with the criminal prosecution of strikes and lockouts. The new constitutional charter, by contrast, configures the strike as a "right" (exercisable, albeit within the framework of the laws that regulate it, art. 40); not even the lockout (although it does not have an equal proclamation), according to the preferable though contested opinion, seems able any longer to be considered a crime, but rather to fall within the legal sphere. The settlement of collective disputes is no longer provided for, nor could special magistracies be established for that purpose, nor could compulsory arbitration be imposed, at least for those categories which are recognized as having the aforementioned right to strike. However, special conciliation and mediation offices, existing in many countries, could be most useful, avoiding the continual recourse to the work of the Ministry of Labor. This is a matter that perhaps will be regulated in the future; for now, what the Code of Civil Procedure of 1942 provides on individual disputes remains in force, with some modifications of no great significance. The special procedure does not constitute a system distinct from the ordinary one, because most of the rules that formed its previous content have been extended to ordinary proceedings; nevertheless, some particular provisions remain (among other things, regarding the greater breadth of the judge's investigative powers, legal representation, appeals, etc.), which apply before the special sections (always composed solely of magistrates) of the preture and tribunals (at first instance, depending on the value of the dispute) and of the courts of appeal (at second instance) for disputes relating to: 1) labor or employment relations that are or can be governed by collective contracts; 2) relations of sharecropping, share tenancy and lease to a direct cultivator; 3) labor and employment relations of employees of public bodies, organized by trade-union associations (according to the teaching of the Court of Cassation, in disagreement with the Council of State); 4) labor relations of employees of public bodies, which are not assigned by law to another judge. In matters of social insurance, the competent court at first instance is the tribunal (and the harbor master's offices for disputes concerning maritime labor).
Yet another aspect of labor law is the international one, of great importance for countries with large emigration such as Italy. Rules on the matter 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 determined States or in plurilateral conventions usually open to subsequent accessions. To the latter, the "International Labor Organization" has given very great impetus (v. the relevant entry, v. also on the whole matter: LEGISLAZIONE SOCIALE; PROTEZIONE DEI LAVORATORI).