Labour legislation in the early years of the corporative regime

Abstract

With the institution of the corporative regime of the New State in 1933, the freedom of organisation was suppressed and strikes and lock-outs outlawed. Relations between industry and workers were centred instead on direct bargaining on contracts and agreements. However, at a very early stage the State gave itself unilateral and authoritarian powers to fix pay and conditions. This article seeks to answer a number of simple questions. Firstly, it traces the high and low points of industrial bargaining and authoritarian State intervention. Secondly, it seeks to define the main shared features of industrial agreements and minimum wage legislation during the early years of the regime, up to around 1942-43, when significant changes occurred because of the demands of a wartime economy and growing social discontent. Finally, the article gives an account of the turnaround which began at the end of the second World war. This involved reduced State intervention and increased powers being granted to employers under the collective bargaining rules which came into force in March 1947.