Definition
A dispute between employer and workman is a formal legal category of labor conflict recognized under nineteenth-century English statutory law — specifically the Employer and Workman Act 1875 and its predecessor statutes — designating disagreements arising out of the contract of service between a master (employer) and a workman. The category was significant because it determined which forum had jurisdiction to hear the complaint and what remedies were available. Under the relevant legislation, county courts were empowered to hear such disputes and could order specific performance of a contract, payment of wages, damages, or rescission of the contract of service, rather than merely treating breach as a criminal matter as earlier law had done.
The term functioned as a jurisdictional trigger: whether a conflict qualified as a "dispute between employer and workman" under the Act determined whether the statutory regime applied, as distinct from ordinary contract disputes between parties not standing in that relationship.
Common Confusion
The employer-and-workman framework is easily conflated with the older master-and-servant regime it partially replaced. Under the Master and Servant Act 1867 and earlier law, a workman's breach of contract could be prosecuted criminally, resulting in imprisonment. The Employer and Workman Act 1875 decriminalized most labor breaches and reframed the relationship in civil terms. Sources written before 1875 that use "dispute between master and servant" are not equivalent to sources using "dispute between employer and workman" — the legal consequences, available remedies, and underlying theory differ substantially. Researchers conflating the two bodies of law will misread both the procedural history and the substantive rights at issue.
Why It Matters in Research
The corpus researcher working in nineteenth-century English labor law must track a terminology shift that reflects a deliberate legislative reframing. Before 1875, the dominant vocabulary is master/servant, and breach by the workman carried quasi-criminal consequences. After 1875, the vocabulary shifts to employer/workman, and the relationship is reconceived in civil-contract terms. A source using one set of terms is not interchangeable with a source using the other.
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry cross-references 1 Ex. D. 179, a report from the Exchequer Division, which signals that even after the 1875 Act, appellate courts were actively working out the boundaries of who qualified as a "workman" for statutory purposes. The definition of "workman" was a live question — certain categories of workers (clerks, domestic servants, higher-paid employees) were excluded from the Act's protections, and cases turned on whether a given individual fell within the statutory definition. Researchers should not assume the term "workman" in this context carries its ordinary meaning; it had a technical statutory scope.
American researchers should exercise particular caution: the employer-and-workman framework is distinctly English and has no direct American statutory counterpart. American labor law developed along different lines, and importing analysis from English employer-and-workman cases into American master-and-servant or early labor arbitration contexts is anachronistic.
For corpus searches, be alert to variant spellings and abbreviations in historical reports: "employer & workman," "employer and workman's act," and "E. & W. Act" all appear. The Exchequer Division citation in Rapalje & Lawrence (1 Ex. D. 179) places this squarely in the post-Judicature Act period of English court reorganization, meaning procedural context also shifted alongside the substantive law.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence's treatment is notable for its brevity and its cross-reference structure. The entry for "MAN (in employer and workman's act)" with the citation 1 Ex. D. 179 indicates that the dictionary's primary concern was definitional precision around the term "workman" — specifically, identifying who qualified as a statutory "man" or workman under the Act. This reflects the genuine doctrinal pressure point of the era: the Act's benefits flowed only to those who met the statutory definition, and litigation clustered around boundary cases.
What the historical dictionary does not supply — and what a researcher needs — is the contrast with the pre-1875 criminal framework, the remedial structure of the county court jurisdiction, or the exclusions built into the workman definition. Rapalje & Lawrence assumes a reader already familiar with the statutory backdrop and points only to the definitional refinement offered by case law. Researchers relying solely on this entry will have the citation but not the context.
Jurisdictional Note
This term and its legal framework are specific to English law under the Employer and Workman Act 1875. Scottish and Irish applications of equivalent legislation involved some procedural variation. The framework has no direct American equivalent; U.S. labor law research should proceed under master-and-servant doctrine, early arbitration statutes, or — for the later period — the developing federal and state labor relations framework.