My article entitled “Social Longterm relations – Labour contract as a model in the law of obligation” (EuZA 2026, 32) has just appeared. It is the conclusion of my participation in the EuSoCo (European Social Contract) project. The project started with an assessment of long-term contracts in actual labour-, tenancy and consumer credit law. Due to three common elements (life, duration, use) we developed a new categpry of contracts for use as “life time contracts”. We discussed similarities and differences with regard to sales law (spot contracts). Our book on Life Time Contracts (The Hague Eleven 2014) collected examples from many countries. Its contents was summarized into 16 principles translated into all important languages. This initiated a number of additional publications, especially two books edited in Luxembourg and Braga (Portugal). More details about the project before 2019 can be found at www.eusoco.eu
Renting capital
The new essay is based on the contributions in the project and profited from as well as the opportunities provided by the university of Trento to study Roman contract law. I searched a general contract model covering labour, rent and credit relations in industrial societies. Its general findings have been published in the book “Der andere Vertrag”(2023) including an English summary. The study of the historical roots in Roman law revealed that the contract model organizing the use of capital ownd by others’ for those who lack access to capital and ownership (house, factory, money) is the Roman rent contract (locatio conductio). It replaced property rights and sales law (emptio venditio) which had been dominant in feudal law. The rent contract instead provided a number of cooperative duties which are especially interesting today.
Workforce or workplace – who rents?
But while consumer lawyers agreed to this model labour lawyers contradicted although Roman law had had no problem with it. But modern labour law looks at the capital used in a reverse sense. To fit the modern definitions of labour contracts the used capital would have to be allocated to the other side of the genetic Synallagma. Tenants and consumers are users, workers just as their predecessors when labour was provided by slaves appear as providers of (human) capital. To escape the idea of slavery the ability to work had been turned into a tradable “workforce” which the worker can sell. We find that such allocation similar to slavery is not necessary. Just as tenancy and credit contracts the user is opposed to the owner of the means of production. He has to supply the use of capital to workers which to be productive in an industrialised economy have no alternative .
While a tenant makes use of the house owned by the landlord, the borrower uses the money owned by the lender the worker makes use of the workplace owned by the entrepreneur. In this perspective labour law can be used as the most sophisticated and informed description of a general “use contract” developed out of the historical model of a rent contract (locatio conductio). If this is true the step from status to contract seems not have been totally accomplished. This tiny change in understanding will have important repercussions through out private law and beyond. In sociological terms collective and cooperative forms of labour will carry new long term principles into the law.