Jordi Domenech

Labour market adjustment a hundred years ago: the case of the Catalan textile industry, 1880-1913 -super-1

This paper studies the way workers and firms behaved in a highly cyclical sector such as the Catalan cotton textile industry. Using firm level evidence from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the paper shows that, in spite of weak unionization and the lack of regional or local collective bargaining institutions, piece rates in cotton spinning and weaving were not subject to competitive rate cuts and remained fixed over the cycle. When facing a negative demand shock, firms adjusted by reducing output, hours of work, labour productivity, and employment. The paper finally evaluates the possible sources of wage rigidity in the industry.

Rural Labour Markets and Rural Conflict in Spain Before the Civil War (1931–6)

This article looks at the causes of rural conflict in 1930s Spain. Rather than stressing bottom‐up forces of mobilization linked to poor harvests and rural unemployment or the inability of the state to enforce reformist legislation, this article explores the role of state policy in sorting out the acute coordination and collective action problems of mobilizing rural labourers. This is done by looking at the effects of intervention on rural labour markets in dry‐farming areas of Spain (parts of Castile and of Andalusia). Given the difficulties of constructing a conclusive test of the hypothesis, three indirect testing strategies are used. The first is an examination of the qualitative evidence on the functioning of labour markets in dry‐farming areas of Spain. Second, because the argument presented in this article implies the existence of severe restrictions on the labour supply of rural labourers during the harvest in the early 1930s, harvest‐to‐winter wage ratios before and after the passing of legislation are studied. Finally, the diffusion of union offices and general strikes in several dry‐farming provinces of Spain is examined, in order to show that alternative hypotheses to explain rural conflict are not consistent with the historical record.

Legal origin, ideology, coalition formation, or crisis? The emergence of labor law in a civil law country, Spain 1880–1936

What drives institutional change? This paper analyses the roles of legal tradition, ideology, changes in relative prices, interest groups, and coalition formation by looking in detail at the passing of labor law in Spain from 1880 to 1936. In spite of being a civil law country, I show how political elites were reluctant to intervene in the labor market until 1919. Factors stressed by classic political economy held sway with weak and small coalitions for reform being unable to pass and implement new labor market regulations. The influence of the international debate about the causes of industrial conflict and its remedies – both from social Catholicism and from reformist and legal thought in more industrialized countries – shaped nonetheless the domestic debate and increased the appeal of labor market regulation. Labor law made big leaps in critical junctures like periods of poorly managed colonial wars (Cuba, Morocco) or in the late 1910s with the explosion of social conflict. Especially, the crisis of 1918–20 increased the decision-making powers of governments with weak parliamentary support, bringing about the definitive consolidation of labor law in Spain.

Women's Paid Work in an Urban Developing Economy. Barcelona in 1930

In this paper we explore the determinants of womens work using data from Barcelona in 1930. Although participation rates were much lower in Barcelona than in cities in the UK or the US at roughly the same time, our estimates of the labour supply suggest women in Barcelona did respond to wage incentives. The most distinguishable feature of the household division of labour in Barcelona is the lack of substitution effects among family members, especially among women. The sensitivity of the participation of each individual woman to the participation of other members of the household might indicate that labour markets were highly segmented and anticipates the existence of large differences in household earnings and welfare. We argue that the persistence of labour-intensive methods of production requiring on-the-job training might explain the type of household division of labour that we find in Barcelona.

Land reform and conflict before the Civil War: landowner response to tenancy reform in 1930s Catalonia: LAND REFORM AND CONFLICT BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR

This article studies the impact of insecure property rights on the behaviour of owners of land before the Spanish Civil War. The theoretical literature on land reform argues that legal threats to the status quo determine agrarian organization, with owners selling land and moving to other asset classes or engaging in large‐scale substitution of sharecroppers and tenants with wage labourers. This study, which uses municipal data on tenant evictions in Catalonia in 1934–5, does not find that uncertainty over property rights in the 1930s meant that owners tried to substitute tenants with wage labourers, especially in the case of the controversial rabassa morta contracts on vineyards. Here it is argued that after 40 years of organizational adjustment to shocks related to phylloxera infestations, legal changes, urbanization, and changes in relative prices, by the 1930s the margin for adjustment was small.

Technology Transfer and the Early Development of the Cotton Textile Industry in Nineteenth Century Spain

This chapter analyzes the transformation process of Catalonia into a major industrial district. Our analysis finds that the origins of industrial development can be traced back to the first decades of the eighteenth century with a calico-printing industry appearing with the support of a prohibitionist trade policy. This early development led to the diffusion of a cotton spinning and weaving industry in the same century. After severe crises in the first decades of the nineteenth century, the Catalan cotton textile industry was able to reestablish its lead position in the Mediterranean basin on the basis of two fundamental pillars: availability of skilled labor and capacity to import the latest technologies from abroad, especially from Great Britain. This cotton-based industrial district underwent an important crisis in the first decades of the twentieth century but its skilled workforce and entrepreneurial networks helped develop new industrial sectors that have survived until today.

EMPLEO Y CARRERAS LABORALES EN CORREOS DE ESPAÑA, 1890-1935

The development of postal services has played an indisputable role in industrialization, market integration and state formation. Smooth functioning of these services depended on the existence of a well-paid and motivated body of civil servants. I study the organization of the internal labour market for civil servants in postal services in Spain from 1890 to 1935 showing a career in the postal services offered high entry wages, growing wages over the life cycle, and a secure job until retirement. There were two downsides to pursuing a career in the postal services. Firstly, entry and promotion depended on the expansion of employment. Secondly, nominal wages were upward rigid, causing large real wage losses during WWI.