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IV. State Social Policy The growing commodification of employment relations in Hungary, like in many other European countries in the second half of the 19th century was increasingly accompanied by state efforts to regulate and organize these relations and to intervene into problems that arose for employers, employees , the state, and society in connection with the ongoing changes in the world of work. In what follows, those efforts on the part of the state will be presented that at least in part, for whatever reasons, were concerned with the protection and betterment of the workforce. At the center of this stood, on the one hand, worker protection, focused on the working relationship and working conditions, and on the other the system of social security, which was basically geared to protecting the workforce in cases of inability to work, however caused, whether permanent or temporary. These two areas of policy together will be considered as state social policy. IV.1. Labor Protection (from 1848 to 1914) Labor protection policy in Hungary, like in other European countries, can be divided into three broad areas. The first of these was general labor protection in commerce and industry, which prescribed the various regulations or protective measures for working conditions in these sectors. Where distinctions were made here, these were tied to the labor condition or, for example, to the size of the business or the status of workers within it. In addition to this, there existed a second area referred to as special protection regulations in the area of commercial or industrial work that were—exclusively or additionally—connected to some personal characteristics of the worker, notably age or sex. Regarding the regulations for learning a trade or for commercial apprenticeship, which will be considered here as part of the special protection regulations, the two areas overlapped in that particular special protections for young workers were tied to the status of apprentice. A third group of labor protection measures were related to working conditions that did not fall into the category of com- 70 Divide, Provide, and Rule merce and industry, this covering, among other employment sectors, the broad category of agricultural labor. At the beginning of the period under investigation here, the relevant trade regulations and laws were of key importance for the whole area of labor protection. The Austrian trade regulation of 1859 remained valid in Hungary as well until after the Compromise of 1867.1 With the trade law of 18722 an independent legal foundation was created in Hungary for the regulation of commercial and industrial working conditions. However, even the second Hungarian trade law of 1884,3 promulgated 12 years later, remained very much a matter of laissez faire, at least as far as labor protection was concerned. The reform of this law was added to agendas again and again over the decades, but was never realized even up to the outbreak of World War I. In spite of this, over the decades certain individual questions of relevance to labor protection were indeed newly regulated or reregulated . The enactment of three laws covering individual areas of worker protection namely on Sunday rest in 1891, on the special protection of women in 1911, and finally the ban on the production of matches using white and yellow phosphorus in 1911, which entered into force in 1913, were each closely connected with international efforts at labor protection . The fact that Hungary was inextricably teamed in an unequal relationship with Austria on the international stage was a significant factor in shaping developments within the country. Work in preparation for a complete overhaul of the Hungarian 1884 trade law had existed at ministerial level since the late 1890s. But there were always references to the complexity of the material, the huge extent of the revision, or the need to give space for “the influence of interest groups in the preparatory work” to hold out and justify further delays.4 After the turn of the century, the fruits of all the preparatory work were made public in the form of a collection of materials. The coalition government of Sándor Wekerle (April 1906 – January 1910) then made serious attempts to bring the elaboration of a new law forward. In 1908 the minister for commerce released a comprehensive plan penned by the secretary of state for the ministry, the internationally recognized specialist in trade and commercial policy, labor protection and social insurance policy, 1 Act 17/1884, fn.1. 2 Act 8/1872. 3 Act 17/1884...

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