Kalyan A. Legal regulations of labour relations in Western European countries (historical and legal aspect)

The dissertation is devoted to the research into the formation and development of legal regulation of labour relations in West European countries from the end of the XVIII till the beginning of the XX century. The norms of civil, labour-and-administrative law and industrial law are analyzed, and the conclusion on main stages of the formation and development of legal regulation of labour relations in West European countries are made. The dissertation focuses on the analysis of the historiography of formation and development of legal regulation of labour relations in West European countries. A great number of research works by both national and foreign authors have been analyzed, and the conclusion has been drawn that they research into just a few aspects of the legal regulation of labour relations. Moreover, the conclusion is not always unbiased. The dissertation also studies the theories of labour relations, and it is found that they are closely connected with social and economic conditions of employees' lives, working conditions and their attitudes to the ownership of the means of production. The dissertation researches the introduction in the XIX century of the law, which regulated the formation and activities of trade unions, the organization of industrial action, labour protection and social security issues. It has been found that the adoption of laws was no more than the reaction of the state on the labour movement; the legislation was not socially oriented. The socially oriented legislation appeared only in the XX century when legal labour regulations were formed. It has been found that the source of legal labour in the countries of continental Europe was the terms and conditions of collective agreement, while in England the source was collective negotiated conditions. The dissertation analyses the sources of legal regulation of labour relations in West European countries in XX century. The peculiarities of how to legally regulate trade unions' activities, how to conclude collective agreement, how tohandle labour conflicts, how to develop the legal regulation of working time, recreation time and social security issues are analyzed. It traces the transformation of wage labourers into co-owners of factories, their involvement into management, and allocation of funds within factories. Legal systems of West European countries have been analyzed both in horizontal and vertical planes. The dissertation emphasizes social nature of West European countries and its gradual transformation to a just and fair state.