How medieval guilds managed mobile workers—a lesson for today's talent wars
A new study of 17th-century Scandinavian craft guilds reveals how skilled workers negotiated across borders, forcing masters to balance tight labor control with business realities. The findings expose timeless tensions between worker mobility and employer interests—and show that sustainable solutions required compromise, not coercion.
Originaltitel: Dealing with Mobility: Guilds and Tramping Journeymen in Seventeenth-Century Scandinavia
<p>The aim of this paper is to discuss the mobility of skilled labour within small and specialised guilds in peripheral Europe during the mid-seventeenth century. Based on archival records for passementerie makers and embroiderers in Stockholm, Sweden and Copenhagen, Denmark, the paper highlights conflicts brought on by labour mobility. What can these conflicts tell us about the situation within two small and specialised trades in Scandinavia, and how were they handled? The study examines examples of the actual implementation of both regulations and traditions associated with the crafts. This illuminates historical strategies for human resource management as well as economic relations between Scandinavia and the Continent. The results suggest a balancing act of negotiations between the needs of journeymen and masters respectively, paired with a pronounced need to align with their German counterparts. It also becomes clear that conditions differed between Stockholm and Copenhagen. Not only was the number of native artisans higher within the Danish guilds concerned, there was also substantial re-growth by apprenticeship. In contrast, Sweden was heavily dependent on immigration of skilled labour.</p>