Swedish Employers Research Articles

Swedish Employers and Trade Unions, Labor Migration and the Welfare State—Perspectives on Swedish Labor Migration Policy Debates during the 1960s and the 2000s

This article uses a political economy approach and explores the nexus between labor migration and the welfare state and how its specificities have been viewed and presented by organized interests of employers and trade unions in Swedish labor migration policy debates during the 1960s and the 2000s. The analysis demonstrates that the Swedish Employers’ Confederation (SAF) and its organizational successor the Swedish Confederation of Enterprise (SN) have preferred a market-liberal labor migration policy. Over time, a liberal immigration policy has been viewed by employers as an important policy solution to extend levels of economic growth, increase firm competitiveness, and maintain funding for generous welfare state services. However, since the 1960s the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) has preferred a state-coordinated and regulated labor migration policy. In LO’s perspective, a regulated immigration policy is a fundamental precondition for guaranteeing workers’ rights, and for minimizing potential negative effects for the functioning of the Swedish labor market model and for a prosperous Swedish welfare state.

Globalization and the erosion of the Nordic model: A Swedish–Finnish comparison

In 1990 Swedish employers ended peak-level bargaining, while in 2007 the Finnish employers’ confederation withdrew from the tripartite bargaining system. This article compares the two events, examining the underlying dynamics of class struggle and in particular the shift in structural power resulting from the transnational organization of production. We argue that the far lower degree of transnationalization in Finland explains why the attack on the established class compromise happened much later than in Sweden and has been less successful.

Docks and Defeat: The 1909 General Strike in Sweden and the Role of Port Labour

Swedish trade unions’ most devastating defeat was the general strike of 1909. In response to several lockouts, the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) had launched a general strike in August that year, a decision taken without first consulting its affiliates or individual union members. Yet, according to Knut Backstrom, a central decision had never been so enthusiastically supported by the rank and file. One obvious object of industrial action, both strikes and lockouts, is to damage the opponents’ finances. The general strike struck a considerable blow against core industries such as iron, steel, timber, and pulp, threatening to close them more or less completely. One might think, therefore, that the struck employers and their associations would have been eager to settle the conflict with the LO, even at the cost of an agreement mainly on the workers’ terms. Instead, the general strike ended in a victory for the employers’ association, the Swedish Employers’ Confederation (SAF). The strike was just not powerful enough. There are several reasons for the strike’s ineffectiveness. This article’s focus is the transportation system, an aspect of vital importance for the outcome of the strike, but one that was underestimated at the time by the LO and has continued to be by subsequent research. The railway workers did not take part in the strike for legal reasons – a well-known and often discussed weakness. Even more crucial was the lack of labour resistance on the docks. HSIR 34 (2013) 1–27

Mandatory Criminal Record Checks in Sweden: Scandals and Function Creep

Over the last decade, more and more Swedish employers have become obliged to check jobseekers’ criminal records beforemaking their hiring decisions. The use of criminal records for mandatory checks of job candidates and staff outside areasinvolving national security represents an entirely novel use of the criminal record database, marking a significant breach withprevious regulations regarding the database and creating a new potential for its utilization for surveillance purposes. Parallel tothis development, the number of enforced subject access requests in the country has increased dramatically. In this article, Iexamine this ongoing function creep of the Swedish criminal record database and its direction and limits, based on the moralpositions taken by the country’s government in connection with the new legislation enabling the creep. Newspaper articlescovering and commenting on two paedophile scandals that shook the country in the recent past are analysed to capture conflictingvalues around the idea of a closer vetting of childcare workers, so as to better understand the moral positions adopted. Theongoing function creep is studied in light of the ‘sociology of scandals’ to better understand what made it possible, and brokeninto its constituent elements to see what it meant in practice, what the forces were that drove it further, and how far it hasprogressed.

Swedish Employers and Trade Unions, Varieties of Capitalism and Labour Migration Policies

This article explores the extent to which the varieties of capitalism (VoC) approach can inform our understanding of the role of organised interests in the process of labour migration policy reform in Sweden during the 2000s. VoC scholars maintain that policymakers prefer reforms conforming to the national political economy. Employers are also thought to support policies incentivecompatible with the prevailing model of capitalism. The analysis presents a case that is partly at odds with the view of economic and social policy reform developed in the VoC approach. The analysis show that the Swedish Confederation of Enterprise prefers a market-liberal labour migration policy, while the Swedish Trade Union Confederation prefers state-coordinated labour migration policies compatible with central features of the Swedish coordinated model – active labour market policies and strong trade unions.

What is the Right Profile for Getting a Job? A Stated Choice Experiment of the Recruitment Process

We study the recruitment behavior of Swedish employers using data from a stated choice experiment. In the experiment, the employers are first asked to describe an employee who recently and voluntarily left the firm, and then to choose between two hypothetical applicants to invite to a job interview or to hire as a replacement for their previous employee. The two applicants differ with respect to characteristics such as gender, age, education, experience, ethnicity, religious beliefs, family situation, weight, and health. Our results show that employers discriminate against applicants who are old, non-European, Muslim, Jewish, obese, have several children, or have a history of sickness absence. Moreover, increasing the firms’ cost of uncertainty in hiring – through more firm co-payment in the sickness benefit system – may reduce hiring, but does not affect the degree of discrimination. Also, there are only small differences in the degree of discrimination between different types of recruiters and firms. Overall, our results suggest that the discrimination, at least partially, should reflect statistical discrimination.

Implicit prejudice and ethnic minorities

PurposeThe aim of this paper is to examine whether Swedish employers implicitly/automatically hold negative attitudes toward Arab‐Muslims, an ethnic minority group subjected to substantial labor market discrimination in Sweden and, more specifically, associate members of this minority group with lower work productivity, as compared with native Swedes.Design/methodology/approachAdapted versions of the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald et al., 1998) designed to measure implicit attitudes and productivity stereotypes toward Arab‐Muslims were used. Corresponding explicit measures were administered.FindingsThe results clearly show that employers have stronger negative implicit attitudes toward Arab‐Muslims relative to native Swedes as well as implicitly perceiving Arab‐Muslims to be less productive than native Swedes. Notably, the explicit measures reveal much weaker negative associations.Practical implicationsSince Arab‐Muslims are automatically perceived as being less productive, the present findings suggest that negative implicit productivity stereotypes could have significant effects on labor market outcomes, such as when employers make hiring decisions. Given that many hiring decisions are presumably based on “gut‐feelings”, implicit attitudes and stereotypes, more so than their explicit counterparts, may exert a substantial impact on how employers contemplate and make decisions regarding human resources.Originality/valueWhereas traditional research has focused on self‐conscious, explicit work‐related attitudes toward various ethnic minority groups, the study offers a novel approach to understanding work‐related prejudice.

EMPLOYERS AND SICKNESS INSURANCE

The Swedish Employers' Confederation (SAF) had already applied in the 1910s a strategy that companies should not compete with social benefits on the labour market. So SAF welcomed the introduction of national sickness insurance in 1955. The system included deductibles, which were seen as necessary in sickness insurance. Before the reform salaried employees had received sick pay from the employer and their compensation was 100%. Their organizations succeeded, in spite of SAF resistance, in getting supplementary contractual sick pay leading to elimination of deductibles. This paved the way for other organizations to negotiate solutions that gave full compensation for loss of earnings while sick. Consequently sickness rates became very high. Up to 1990 SAF was unable to stop the elimination of deductibles. The economic crisis around 1990 made it possible for politicians to introduce deductibles and statutory sick pay. This was in accordance with SAF's views. Increase in long‐term illness from 1997 led to a weakening of SAF's position. According to the unions, long‐term illness was due to bad work environments and measures should be taken to give employers incentives to improve working conditions. Supported by the unions, the social democratic government introduced increased financing responsibility for employers 2005.

Solidarity across Classes: The Swedish Employers' Mass Lockouts and the Spirit of <i>Saltsjjbaden</i>

Conventional thinking about the 1938 Basic Agreement at Saltsjobaden between organized labor and capital in Sweden holds that it was one of the consequences of a shift in the balance of power between workers and employers to the latter’s disadvantage. But detailed archival evidence and analysis shows that it was in fact part and parcel of an evolving cross-class alliance of unions and employer associations primarily in export and other traded goods sectors against militant and high-paid workers in sheltered sectors, especially the building and construction trades. Those relatively high wages were earned at the expense of workers producing traded goods, especially in engineering. Evidence about employers’ use of the multi-sectoral sympathy lockouts to bring both labor peace and cross-sectoral wage uniformity indicates that the unions dominating the labor confederation actually welcomed the militant interventions, whose main purpose was to give them a legitimate pretext to intervene against and discipline militancy and wage setting in the sheltered sectors. Details in and about the 1938 Basic Agreement confirm the argument about a growing cross-class alliance between capital and labor, not a shift in the balance of power.

Fixed-Term-at-Will: The New Regulation of Fixed-term Work in Sweden

Abstract: Since 1 July 2007, Swedish employers have no longer been required to provide an objective reason, such as the special nature of the work or a temporary peak in their business, when they hire someone on a fixed-term rather than an open-ended contract. The long list of different types of fixed-term contracts in the Employment Protection Act has been shortened, and a radical new type – fixed-term-at-will – has been introduced. Fixed-term-at-will marks a departure from earlier attempts to rein in fixed-term work by only allowing it when justified by some inherent characteristic of the work itself. Instead, the abuse of consecutive fixed-term contracts is to be prevented by time limits. An employee can work on fixed-term-at-will contracts for the same employer for up to two years during a five-year period. Through generous possibilities to combine fixed-term-at-will with the other remaining types of temporary contracts, substitute work and seasonal work, Sweden will have virtually no statutory protection against the abuse of successive temporary contracts. In the light of the ECJ’s Adeneler judgment, it must therefore be questioned whether the Swedish regulation complies with directive 1999/70/EC.

Implicit Prejudice and Ethnic Minorities: Arab-Muslims in Sweden

This paper examines whether Swedish employers implicitly/automatically hold i) negative attitudes toward Arab-Muslims, an ethnic minority group subjected to substantial labor market discrimination in Sweden, and more specifically ii) associate members of this minority group with lower work productivity, as compared to native Swedes. Adapted versions of the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald et al., 1998) designed to measure implicit attitudes and productivity stereotypes toward Arab-Muslims were used. Corresponding explicit measures were administered. The results clearly show that employers have stronger negative implicit attitudes toward Arab-Muslims relative to native Swedes as well as implicitly perceive Arab-Muslims to be less productive than native Swedes. Notably, the explicit measures reveal much weaker negative associations. Whereas traditional research has focused on self-conscious, explicit work related attitudes toward various ethnic minority groups, this study offers a novel approach to understanding work related prejudice.

Some Notes on Workplace Equality Renewal in the Swedish Labour Market

In 2001, Swedish authorities imposed a new obligation upon all firms with ten or more employees to undertake annual wage surveys, ‘workplace equality audits’ in which it is possible to ascertain, remedy and prevent unwarranted wage differentials and other unfair employment terms between men and women. An important implication of the new system, called ‘workplace equality renewal’ (självsanering), is that, at the level of the firm all Swedish employers must explain what they mean by work of ‘equal value’ as opposed to ‘different value’. This article discusses the practical pros and cons of the new system, and considers how the surveys can be used in research into the present state of gendered work division. A main finding is that the introduction of this new legislation in the long run might change the Swedish industrial relations system as well as the preconditions for many companies’ human resource management policies. Yet, neither the governmental agencies involved nor the parties’ confederate organizations have been able to clarify what the issue is really about to the single, small business employer or to the local trade union branches. Many employers find any interference, whatever it may be, threatening and trade unions have not realized the potentialities of the system from an employee perspective, potentialities connected to the fact that companies are now more or less forced to make transparent their wage policies at large.

Mid‐Level Officials as Policy Makers: Anti‐Corporatist Policy Change in the Swedish Employers’ Confederation, 1982–1985

The aim of the article is to provide an account of the process of policy change in the Swedish Employers’ Confederation (SAF), 1982–1985, implying a shift from a pro‐corporatist to an anti‐corporatist view on interest representation within decision‐making bodies of public authorities in the sphere of labour market and working life issues. In this respect, the study throws new light on the fall of the ‘Swedish model’ of industrial relations, by stressing the central policy‐making role of a few individuals occupying their positions in the mid level, rather than in the leadership level, of the huge SAF hierarchy.Given the formal structure of SAF and its statutes, SAF seems to be the least likely organisation to show signs of policy making in the mid level. Therefore, the case study also contributes to the general discourse about policy making in organisations, foremost by challenging mainstream rational choice theory assumptions of the role of the formal leadership in processes of policy change.Being based on studies in the archives of SAF, the article reveals the mechanisms explaining why a few mid‐level officials were successful in anchoring a minority standpoint into the basically ‘model‐friendly’ leadership of SAF. The argument put forward is that the key to an understanding of this case of minority influence is to consider the mid‐level officials’ strategic use of different kinds of information‐based persuasion and propaganda techniques. In fact, the policy‐making mid‐level officials belonged to a specific activist subgroup within SAF with its main base in SAF's department of information.

Who Gets the Job and Why? an Explorative Study of Employers'recruitment Behavior

In the literature of labor economics we find many examples of studies analyzing job seekers search behavior, but few examples of the corresponding analysis of the recruitment behavior of employers. This paper gives a picture of the recruitment behavior of Swedish employers. The analysis is based on about 800 telephone interviews with employers regarding the last person they had hired. This paper relates the lemon's problem in Akerlof with the Spence signaling model, and then it proceeds to relate indices and signals to the hiring behavior of employers. Employers mainly recruit personnel in order to expand a certain activity of their firm. On an average the total recruitment process takes about a month. In first round employers mainly look for job seekers with good education and experience. During the job interview the employer search for persons with professional knowledge, personal engagement and social competence.

Attitudes among Swedish employers towards different groups of job applicants

Attitudes among Swedish employers towards different groups of job applicants

Understanding Swedish social democracy: victims of success?

The economic policies of Swedish Social Democrats were not the product of one centralized authority but, rather, a series of initiatives influenced by many political actors and inspired by egalitarian preferences. We focus on three policy areas. First, the welfare state is a central achievement of Social Democracy. Although its expansion is over, it has cemented Social Democracy's position in power and is still popular among the electorate. Second, the labour-market model is in crisis. The centralized Rehn/Meidner model is not working, coordination of wage bargaining has turned out to be difficult, and the trade unions' radical politics of the 1970s alienated Swedish employers from social concertation. Finally, macroeconomic management has had to struggle with inflationary pressures, and the overheating of the late 1980s and the subsequent deflationary shock led to a sharp increase in unemployment in the 1990s. Many of these problems are related to Social Democracy's internal strains. Copyright 1998 by Oxford University Press.

A Common Denominator? Swedish Employers, Trade Unions and Vocational Training

The big organisations of the Swedish labour market have taken a con‐siderable role in the making of vocational education policy in the post‐war period. Here it is argued that the ‘Swedish model’ of co‐operation between the Social Democratic government and the strong central organisations of employers and trade unions respectively has had a substantial impact on the debate over the reform of vocational education.

Changes in Swedish Workers' Compensation: An American Perspective.

In response to escalating costs, substantial changes are being made to the Swedish workers' compensation insurance system. They include increased employer responsibility for sick leave payments, longer waiting periods, benefit reductions, tightened criteria for determining work-relatedness, and decreased support for worksite occupational health services. These changes will make Sweden's system more closely resemble the arrangement that has traditionally existed in the United States. Experience in the United States can illustrate the potential benefits and problems inherent in the Swedish changes. Some of the potential dangers are greater difficulty in determining the true costs of work injuries, less emphasis on prevention, increased pressure for the premature return to work of injured workers, and heightened dissention between patients, doctors, and social insurance officers. Collective discussion of these potential problems by Swedish employers, workers, doctors, social insurance officers, and government officials is needed.

The Role of the Swedish Employers in Restructuring Pay Bargaining and the Labour Process

The Role of the Swedish Employers in Restructuring Pay Bargaining and the Labour Process

The Role of the Swedish Employers in Restructuring Pay Bargaining and the Labour Process

The Role of the Swedish Employers in Restructuring Pay Bargaining and the Labour Process