Another fragment of protection of engagement has long existed in the penalties attached to certain infringements of the right of combination, with reciprocity of course for the employers (cf. § 153 Imp. Ind. Code.)
The guarantee of testimonials has long been afforded—and has met with no opposition—as a means of protection against defamation by individual employers.
Side by side with protection of engagement we have protection in quitting service.
Special protection in quitting service—beyond the ordinary administrative and judicial protection of labour contract against unjust dismissal—consists partly of: protection in dismissal from service, i.e. against expulsion by the employer, and partly, of protection in voluntarily quitting service, i.e. quitting service for special reasons. Both these measures are applied to the whole of industrial wage labour, and have hitherto generally been enforced by the regular courts of justice and administration, by application, however, of special rulings of industrial legislation on written agreements, on the right of special dismissal from service, and the right of quitting service, and on the length of notice required, etc. The further development of protection in quitting service will probably more and more require the extraordinary jurisdiction of the industrial courts of arbitration. Protection against compulsory dismissal into which one employer may be forced by another employer by intimidation, libel, and defamation, is afforded by special penal Acts, and, like protection against breach of contract, is more particularly protection of the employer and is only indirectly protection of the worker.
2. Protection of contract, in the strict sense; protection by limitation of the right of contract, by completion of contract, and by enforcing fulfilment of contract.
Beyond the ordinary judicial protection afforded by the obligations attached to service contract, special guarantees of protection are in part already granted, in part demanded, against abuse of contract, incomplete fulfilment and non-fulfilment of service contract to the disadvantage, as a rule, but of course not in all cases, of wage-labour.
This protection is afforded partly by formal regulations, partly by judicial rulings on special cases. The latter form of protection in contract is closely allied to protection in intercourse (see above); the two overlap each other.
The protection afforded by contract regulations consists in the enforcement of certain formal requirements, and the granting of certain remissions, such as e.g. the requirement of written agreements and the remission of duty on written agreements, etc. First and foremost stands the obligation to post up the working rules. A parte potiori[13] all protection of contract might be called protection of working rules.
The working rules serve in reality to give the workman himself the control over his own rights, but they also are to the interest of the employer.