2,793 works, 150 years of economic thought. Each one summarized and searchable, with cited passages inside.
Could an association advising governments on labour protection also promote workers’ collective bargaining without compromising its neutrality? This question gives Karl Přibram’s 1911 report on the Lugano assembly its distinctive tension. International agreements promised to prevent protective legislation from placing domestic firms at a competitive disadvantage; low-paid home workers, however, needed more than restrictions on working conditions. Přibram follows the association’s contested move toward union organization and legally supported wage agreements, interpreting it as a possible turning point from reform imposed above to reform sustained by workers’ participation. Writing for Austrian reformers, he shows both the leverage international cooperation could provide and the limits of uniform safeguards where protection threatened livelihoods. The report offers a concrete view of how legislative expertise and workers’ self-help became competing—and potentially complementary—approaches to labour reform.