Research On Employment Contract In Medieval Times

The contract of employment documents unearthed in Dunhuang and Turfan, to a certain extent, reflects many aspects of the period from the Gaochang Kingdom of Qu Family to Gui-yi-jun, including economy, politics, military and transportation and so on.Through analyzing the employment contract, we can not only grasp its development process in history, understand the development and changes of employment conditions in China’s medieval period, but can also have a better and more comprehensive understanding of the history and society of the medieval times.This paper first makes a classification of the contract of employment unearthed in Dunhuang and Turfan, according to the differences in the field of employment, analyse the development and changes format, content and clause during the period from the Gaochang Kingdom of Qu Family to Gui-yi-jun, which lasted for four hundred years in terms of the contract of employment from agriculture, stock breeding, manual construction and people-hiring corvee so as to find out the similarities and differences of them in the process of historical development. The second chapter makes a detailed contrast from the angle of employers and employees mainly considering the reasons for signing the contract of employment, such as wheat planting, autumn harvest, lack of labor, livestock and seed, for food and so on. It also discusses the problems of the social status of both sides and the employers called Money Lord in Xizhou States of Tang on the basis of it. The third chapter mainly analyses the price of employment recorded in contract of employment, and summarize epochal characters of means of payment of employment in medieval period from different times of agricultural payment, payment of hiring people to avoid corvee and payment of hiring camels and so on and it features on the steady rise of payment using grain for matrix and inexpensiveness of the payment and many other characters. Through the comparison of various factors the writer thinks the price of employment in this period was in constant rising, but it can’t satisfy the daily life of a family of four to five persons by the income of the employers. The fourth chapter mainly deals with the analyses of the rights and obligations of both sides in employment and food provided by employers and employees suffering from illnesses and other problems. Employees almost have no rights in addition to "enjoying" the payment provided by employers in terms of the harsh obligations made by them which employees have to take. The fifth chapter discusses the damages for the breach of contract, guarantee condition and the status of female applicants in Dunhuang in contract of employment. We can find these damages for breach of contract and formulation of guarantee measures are also aimed at employees through analysis. Moreover, the social status of female applicants and nontonsured female is lower in Dunhuang during Tang and Song Dynasty through the source and other factors of the female guarantees. Finally,this paper summarizes the statuses of the state laws and history of the contract of employment. The contract of employment from the Gaochang Kingdom of Qu Family to Gui-yi-jun is in a transitional phase through Handed down from ancient records and the development of the employment contract during the entire mediaeval.In general, we can come to the conclusion that the contract of employment has developed to a quite perfect degree, and rights and obligations of employment of both sides prescribed are fairly definite through the analysis of this article. Certainly, because of the historical environment of contract of employment it grew out of, it has its limitations. For example, the obligations and damages for breach of contract prescribes in the clauses of it are aimed at employees. Employers have no responsibility when employees encounter something unexpected such as "thief attack" in labor process, but this is the historical period which contract of employment in its development is bound to experience. Provisions for contracting sides of employment are in constant progress relative to that era, such as employers to employees from bodily punishment to economic punishment, conversion from deprivation of family income to punishment of unemployment as well as solution to sick leave. Therefore, the contract of employment of the medieval period, to some extent, sparkles humanized glory.