ABSTRACT
The workplace has been a battleground between the rights of custom and tradition and the rights of property. The ‘rights’ of workers to work at their own pace, take home waste material and have some autonomy over the conditions of their employment have been gradually eroded from the eighteenth century onwards. The introduction of the factory system has been seen as a key weapon in the employers’ fight to control the work completed and the ‘work time’ they believed they had paid for.
