[337] The legal relations between employer and employee are everywhere prescribed with more or less fulness, but in Germany the laws are very minute in character, while the contract in particular is much more rigid, and it is carried out in much greater detail than elsewhere. The laws for Prussia are given in Posseldt, while a summary for the Empire is given in Braun. Each state has its own laws on the subject, but as far as I have been able to examine them, they are practically the same in principle.
I am indebted to Mrs. John H. Converse for permission to use an exhaustive statement of the legal relations between mistress and maid in England prepared by Mrs. Henry C. Lea of Philadelphia.
Weber, in Les Usages locaux, sums up many of the points in French law.
[338] Braun, chaps. VII., XI.
“In England situations are usually subject to a month’s notice on either side.”—Booth, VIII., 221.
No special contract is made in France, with the result that “one changes domestics these days almost as often as political convictions.”—Weber, p. 45.
In Italy, also, no special contract is required, though a servant cannot be turned off without giving him ten days’ notice or a week’s wages.
[339] Posseldt, p. 75. Braun, chap. XIV.
But under many circumstances, specified with great exactness, a servant may be legally dismissed without notice. Posseldt, pp. 64-70, gives a list of nineteen cases where this may be done in Prussia; the laws for Saxony are very similar (pp. 28-30); Braun, chap. XII., gives twenty-one.
[340] Braun, p. 64. In Saxony he is at liberty to choose between returning to his place, paying a fine of 30M., or being imprisoned for eight days. Gesindeordnung für das Königreich Sachsen, p. 8.