Labor Law Looking Into The Interests Employers And Employees

Labor Law, a body of laws, also known as employment law, is designated to address the legal rights of working people, as well as the restriction on them and their organizations. It basically mediates the relationship between the employers and employees and the trade union.

The demand of workers for better condition, the right to organize, and simultaneous demands of the employer to keep the labor cost low and to restrict the power of the workers gave birth to the Labor Law. Employers apprehension was that with the workers organizing to win higher wages, the cost can increase. Even with being forced to introduce costly requirements such as health or safety condition, they will be left with less amount of profit, so they always opposed from being such a law to be implemented. The apprehension of trade unions gaining political power is also one component for which the employers oppose this law.

So the Labor Law is considered as a product of struggles between different interests in society. This law is divided into two broad categories, one is collective labor law and second one is individual labor law. While the first one refers to the tripartite relationship between employer, employee and trade union, the second one is about the employees right at work and through the contract for work. Labor rights have been the integral part of the social and economic development since the period of industrial revolution.

Individual Labor Law has many components such as, employment contract, minimum, wage, working time, health and safety, anti-discrimination and unfair dismissal. It also deals with child labor. Collective labor law similarly has few components; the most important of them are trade union, strikes, picket, workplace involvement, and codetermination.

In the United States, the Labor Law is considered to be a heterogeneous collection of both state law and federal laws. Here the employers generally accept the 8-hour day as of 1912. The maximum standard work week has been set by the Wages and Hours Act of 1938 and it has been set at 44 hours at that time and was reduced to 40 hours in 1950. Despite the standard 40-hour standard work week, there are some other lines of work which require more than 40 hours per week to complete the jobs.

Though in the United States, the labor law is a mix of state and federal laws, the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution limits the power of state and governments to discriminate, though private sector is not directly constrained by the Constitution. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 makes employment discrimination based on the age prohibited with respect to employees having age of 40 years of older. While green card entitles immigrants, who are legal, to work permits, though under the compartmentalization of the several bureaucratic entities, often an illegal alien may work in the United States. labor and employment law