Social Organization of Labour, Wages and the Labour Market in Catalonia: the case of an agricultural farm in the Segarra region in the late nineteenth century

ABSTRACT This article discusses the forms of recruit­ment of the labour force in the Catalan countryside in the late nineteenth century, the dynamics and structural features of la­bour markets and the forms of negotiation and setting of agricultural wages. We focus on the case of the Segarra region, particularly on a farm located in the old village of Timor, which currently forms part of the municipality of Ribera d’Ondara. Most of the data used come from the notebooks of a local landowner, who systematically wrote down all the work done by farm-hands and day-labourers over the period 1884-1895. The results show the feasibility of direct exploitation using wage labour, the coexistence of different types and modalities of labour contracts, the existence of wage differentials, the integration and the segmentation of the agricultural labour mar­kets of, the inadequacy of wages to meet the subsistence and reproduction needs of family units and the levels of labour conflict.