How the "Swedish model" worked in the restructuring of the steel industry
It pointed to "the outlook for improvement in the market for steel."
Then Allan Larsson, joint negotiator for Metall and the SAP, sat down and helped to work out an almost identical proposal only a few months later
It was then that Svenskt Staal AB (SSAB - Swedish Steel Incorporated) was formed through a merger of the state-owned Norrbottens Jaernverk and the
The Swedish trade-union movement is sometimes called the world's
The Swedish union leaders themselves are not bashful about strongest.
assuming this title. It is true that the unions are strong in Sweden.
Let us take the percentages of workers organized, strongest industrial unions organize more than 90 percent of the workers in their branches.
About 75 percent of municipal workers are organized, and about 60 percent even of the retail clerks.
If you look at the unions' influence in the debate that goes on in the society and their influence on the government's policy, you get a similar
The Swedish trade unions are really both seen and heard.
There is, moreover, a close collaboration between the unions and "the other strong branch of the workers movement" (as the Swedish Social
4 of the at to year a hai
Democrats call it) - that is the Social Democratic Workers Party, the SAP.
This party has been in power for 44 of the last 50 years and has obviously set its own special stamp on Swedish society.
However, if you apply somewhat different criteria to assessing the strength of the Swedish unions, for example, militancy in the ongoing struggle for better working conditions and wages, the picture dims.
if you measure the strength they have exerted in defending their members interests in some of the most important struggles the Swedish workers movement has faced in the recent period, then the Swedish unions look positively decrepit.
It is useful to go into the history of one sector. It is little known outside Sweden, but highly illustrative for an article on the conditions for workers struggles in the Sweden of the 1970s and 1980s.
Tom GUSTAFSSON
It is the history of how thousands and thousands of jobs have been lost in the steel industry in central and northern
Sweden. But it is also the history of how the "Swedish Model" was applied in practice in the "structural rationalization" of the steel industry, with good results for the rationalizers themselves (at least in the short run), but with catastrophic consequences for the workers affected and for their home areas.
It is only now that we are beginning to see a few glimmers of light again in the darkness.
What the Swedish Model represents is a historic understanding between the state, the employers, and the union leaders to take social problems to the negotiating table and resolve them through incollaborationism stitutionalized class based on the rule of the lowest common denominator.
So, what has to be described now is this "remodeling" of the Swedish standard grade and special steel industry.
I will try in this to give as concrete as possible a picture of the conditions for and political struggle trade-union in
Sweden today.
In
1977, the so-called state committee on standard-grade steel presented for extensive cuta specific proposal backs in this industry. The arguments were the usual ones:
16 for example. The
"Overproduction of steel on the world scale."
"The need to adjust to a shrinking export market."
"The need to lower labor costs by modernizing the productive plant."
The proposal involved concretely the disappearance of about a fifth of the
Steelworks and production in thousands of tons before the closures (DR)
Nocrbottens
Harlor
Surahammar
Nykroppa
Götsti
• 50
51 - 100
101-J0
601privately-owned Stora Kopparbers and the Granges steelworks and mining businesses. Who gets the axe?
The merger agreement provided for the state taking 50 percent of the stock, while the two private firms got 25 percent each. order to avoid loaning the state money. The state now holds over 75 percent of the stock.)
With the formation of the SSAB, Stora got 750 million Swedish crowns
100 million dollars] for its facilities. Graenges got 1,180,000 Crowns. This was an unprecedented settlement.
From the state committee's proposal to the formation of the SSAB, a violent tug-of-war took place between the various enterprises but also among the local union organizations.
The hardest fights were over which ore-processing plants and pig-iron foundries would be retained. The committee members and steel directors wanted to cut back the industry first in Domnarvet and Borlaenge. (See map.) The union leaders in the far north (Luleaa) and in Oxeloesund on the Baltic coast pressed to get a quick decision on the question. At the same time, the union leaders in Borlaenge tried to prove that the steel industry was more profitable there than in other regions.
There were some important mobilizations of workers. But the Metall leadership managed gradually to bring local union leaderships to heel. In the spring of 1978, an agreement was signed. The Borlaenge plant would be shut down but not before 1980 at the earliest.
At the time about a hundred workers in the Bloetberget mine a few miles outside Borlaenge had occupied their pit in protest against the closure policy. They were the only ones who consistently opposed it. But they also had to give up the fight because the Social Democracy and the union leadership isolated their struggle.
The role of the Social Democrats was decisive. On the one hand, the Social Democratic leadership was directly represented in the negotiations through Allan Larsson. On the other, the former minister of finance, Gunnar Strang, sat in the SAP's own steel committee as chairperson and a big name. The views of this
International Viewpoint 21 May 1984
----- pull-quotes on this page -----
SWEDEN
----- photo credits and running heads -----
picture.
committee were very important in working out an agreement that could be accepted without big political battles.
"With a Social Democratic government, Domnarvet can keep its ore-processing plant."
Kjell-Olof Feldt said that as late as the spring of 1978. At the time, he was a former cabinet minister. minister of finance. With a Social Democratic government — after the 1979 elections - the general conditions would be altered and the earlier decision in principle could be changed. That is what
A half year later, the Social Democratic leadership definitely accepted the
That came as a shock to the local union, which had long continued to market might improve and could also change the previous decision in
Now the local unionists threatened to withdraw from the negotiations over the ore-processing plant. But they were called down to Stockholm and got a thorough working over by the SAP leadership, the leaders of Metall, and by the party leader and premier, Olof Palme, himself.
What sort of threats were made and what pressures were put on the balky local unionists remain unclear. But later the local union leadership justified its acceptance of the closure by saying unless was agreed to there was a threat that the investment promised earlier in the rolling mill would not be made.
On the inside, the SAP leadership's line was firmly established and clear. On the outside, it continued to give con-
January 1979. Then, the public line was brought into conformity with the internal one. The slack was tightened.
since 1976, the local SAP the Borlaenge region had supported the demand to keep open the ore-processing plant in Domnarvet, for they tried to prevent any broad trade-union mobilizations and keep demonstrations strictly under the aegis of the SAP
Even when the agreement was signed in May 1978 when the SSAB was formed, the SAP locally continued to talk strongly for saving the ore-processing plant. Moreover, they managed to get the openly bourgeois government that was in power at the time to appoint a committee to study the "social implications of the SSAB's structural plan." Squeeze but with anesthesia
However, the only result of this was that the closure was delayed by a year and various investment companies were set up to create substitute jobs. all this discussion and investigation was going on, obviously, the interest in mobilizing declined considerably.
When the SAP leadership finally ap proved the closure in Domnarvet in January 1979, the party locally continued to International Viewpoint 21 May 1984 plead for the line that people should try to get the decision changed "in the beginning of the 1980s" when the conditions would be different. How that was supposed to happen they did not make clear.
In this way, they managed tinally to break most of the resistance from the workers and also inside their own organization to a general acceptance of the closure (even if "only for the time being"). The fighting spirit collapsed.
So, the state became the predominant stockholder in the SSAB. For that it had to pay out close to 4 billion crowns in loans and contributions.
It was also quite clear that the orientation adopted by the SAB meant that it would pursue the principles of capitalist profitability.
When the perspective of closures was confirmed and the principle ability accepted, the blows began to fall
The closures were speeded up. The company pushed ahead with after a couple of years. All workers over 58 years old were retired early.
Throughout the process, there was heavy political involvement by the parties, the parliament and the state power. All this was to guarantee that the closures could be carried off smoothly:
The political intervention did not even lead to a postponement of the layoffs, as has often happened elsewhere in Europe when the protests got too big. Its function rather was to divert from the beginning the silent opposition to the closures. Bit by bit, the resistance was disarmed by being channelled into the machinery and the investigating commit-
The fight over standard-grade steel took place primarily in the years 1976-
The battle in the rust-resistant steel sector, a branch of the special steel industry, has gone on mainly since 1982.
At that time intensive negotiations began over "rationalization" special-steel industry. And that was after 6,000 jobs had already been lost in steel
After a long tug-of-war, it has been decided that the privately owned Avesta Jaernverk will get the lion's share of the rust-resistant steel industry. has contributed almost a half a billion crowns in loan write-offs, and 130 million crowns worth of stock is to be sold
Where and how the big cuts are to be made has not been specified. But it is for certain that such slashes are on the way. The big battle in this area is also over a processing plant, but in this case it is one that handles scrap iron rather than
There are many clear parallels with the course of events in the standard-grade steel industry. Investigating committees have proposed their own trade-union "alternative." And local trade-union leaderships have been waging divisive campaigns pleading for just their plants to
The pattern is being followed to the end with 12,000 special-steel workers being left in the position of being mere spectators. They have no guarantee of their jobs. They have to wait and hope that the big elephants can get through their dance without stepping on them.
two special features in this tug-of-war over the special-steel industry.
First of all, the big gainer - the Ax:son Johnson family - is particularly hated by many Swedish workers for its murky and ruthless record in the country's economic history.
Secondly, "remodeling carried out under Democratic government, however, that has not balked at elevating the Johnson clan to the lofty rank of the country's fourth biggest business empire, a company that is still run in the style of
In some respects, the Social Democratic government has proved to be more accomodating to the needs and interests of capital than the bourgeois governments that ruled from 1976 to 1982 ever dared When the anesthesia wears off
The "Swedish Model" has also showed twice in the last decade in the "structural rationalization" in the steel industry that it could carry through closures keeping the social response fairly well serviceable for "flexible" big capitalists, state bureaucrats and trade-union bureaucrats, at least in the present social situaif this "model" has been able to divert and disarm public reaction, that does not mean that it has been able to eliminate it. In fact, wheeling and dealing and compromising over the fate of thousands of people can have a boomerang effect when the full implications of the decisions become entirely clear for those affected.
If this opens up prospects for a renewed struggle, political energies can be renewed. A sign that points in this direction has recently appeared at the Dom-
It is a limited struggle, an election for union chairperson in the laminating section. But this fight has a certain symbolic importance and may be a straw in the wind. The section involved is the biggest
Per Eklund ran in opposition to the Social Democratic leadership in the sec-
But his election was The leadership of Metall intervened and invalidated the vote.
In the re-vote, which was held on the shop floor, a long-standing demand of the militant opposition, Eklund won by a
He got 70 percent of the 450 votes cast in an election in which 65 percent of the workers voted. That may be a record in union elections at Domnar-
There was, therefore, a very strong
the Labour Party in
The council is now set on collision course with the government over its Nottinghamshire, the focus of struggle for miners' unity (DR)
refusal to conform with spending limits that would re- The Alliance came second in all three bysult in massive cuts in social expenditure.
However, the results by no means entail that Labour However, the future course of political events will would win a general election. Extrapolations from the be affected in large measure by the result of the miners' votes indicate that while the Tories could possibly lose dispute. Despite the strike coming during the spring their overall majority in a future election, the alliance and summer, a traditionally low point for coal conbetween the Social Democratic Party (formed after a sumption, the action is beginning to bite in industry.
right-wing split from the Labour Party) and the old In the Nottingham coal field, where a majority of the bourgeois Liberal Party would hold the balance of miners are breaking the strike, mass pickets of 10,000 mobilization. "Even poems and drawings were put up calling for a vote for Per," Christer Olson, one of the iron workers active in the campaign, pointed out.
"People got a clear idea of what the tvo candidates stood for, and they figured out exactly how to vote. The workers took the election to heart, since most of them were furious about the national union's intervention.
"Now, people expect to be better informed about the union's work, and they expect to see real discussion get underway on the local contract," Christer added.
"I am sure, too, that there will be more union activity. People feel involved now that they voted Per Eklund in. They are going to push to see that he really
The election has also aroused hope that maybe some new spirit will come into the union's work. Fi-
There is no doubt that it was the years of mismanagement and weak-kneed policy by the Social Democratic leader-
"change in regime."
In this respect, the election result was a "delayed reaction" to the years of closures and cutbacks.
The upturn in the economic situation and the presence of an opposition candidate who had become known for his consistent defense of his fellow workers' interests, even though he had been in a minority, provided the catalysts.
The Social Democrats both in the local union and at the national level were obviously surprised at the outcome of the election. They had hoped that the re-vote would have led to a different result than the first. But that did not happen. To the contrary, the national union's intervention helped to increase the workers' determination to elect a more militant candidate.
"A lot of people doubted that it was the formal procedure and a number of minor irregularities in the first election that motivated Metall to make the decision it did," Christer Olsson said. More likely, it was Per Eklund's membership in
Fourth International, that was the sticking point.
So, it seems that the tragic history of the cutbacks in Svenskt Staal AB in 1976-1979 and what has been going on in the special-steel industry since 1982 have not just been swept under the rug.
Even the setbacks have built up a fund of experience that has proved to represent investment for the future.
The change of regime in the laminating section at the Domnarvet works in the spring of 1984 may be a sign that new and more militant moods are also developing elsewhere in Swedish industry.
Disappointment over the years of decline - and discontent with a Social Democratic government that has proved to be almost the exact opposite of what a lot of the workers who voted for it hoped and expected - are having an effect. They are sowing seeds. And in the coming years these may grow into a deeply rooted and vital opposition movement in Swedish unions.
ship that prepared the way for the the Socialist Party, Swedish section of the
BRITAIN