There is a great piece in the NY Times about work after the Black Plague during the middle ages.
Apparently, the elite landowners used laws and threats of death to force workers back to the farm.
“In the years after the plague, all across Europe, landowners and
noblemen watched, first in outrage, then in fury, as people walked
away from their jobs and went in search of a better life. What
followed was a hysterical wave of legislation that tried to return the
economy to where it had been before the plague. Statutes and
ordinances froze wages at pre-plague levels; they made it illegal to
leave a master's land, illegal to flee; they, in effect, made
unemployment itself illegal.”
Note: The NYT is paywalled for most.