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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2011
Ever since the first worker was employed, employers have concerned themselves with worker discipline. Workers agree to work but, having agreed, are unable or unwilling to supply their labour as reliably as the employer would wish. Ultimately, discipline can be enforced by sacking offending workers, but this is not necessarily the most profitable solution. Bryson (2007), for instance, observes that
[Elizabethan] actors were subjected to rigorous contractual obligations, with graduated penalties for missing rehearsals, being drunk or tardy, failing to be ‘ready apparelled’ at the right moment, or – strikingly – for wearing any stage costumes outside the playhouse. Costumes were extremely valuable, so the fine was a decidedly whopping (and thus probably never imposed) £40. But even the most minor infractions, like tardiness, could cost an actor two days' pay.
On the other hand, Stone's (1950) account of work patterns in an Elizabethan coal mine between 1580 and 1582 indicates that efforts by the employer to control absence were non-existent:
[T]he Sheffield accounts … offer a very different explanation than that of the ruthless employer sacking and hiring his workmen at will. Rather … the miner worked when and as long as he thought fit and the employer was obliged to content himself with methodically recording the rate of absenteeism. Involuntary absenteeism as shown in the accounts was extremely rare, though some of the unexplained short-time weeks may have been caused by illness. […]
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