Builders’ Wages in Fourteenth-Century Piedmont: The Role of Labour Markets and Seigneurial Dependency

This paper investigates labour relations in the fourteenth-century Piedmont construction sector by examining the dynamics underpinning employment practices and wage levels. Thanks to the accounting sources produced by the administration of the House of Savoy it was possible to evaluate the role of labour market, local customs, as well as labour relationships in determining builders’ wages. The study also considers the hierarchical relation which subordinate workers to client. Given the relative absence of guilds in the area, the combination of free and unfree labour was a common practice. Different degrees of dependency and mechanisms for control of workforces make it inappropriate to assume that some workers were entirely free to sell their labour and others had no such freedom at all.