Not only in Volvo
An interim leadership was put in until the elections that were scheduled for February. For the first time in Graenges' history, the election was conducted in the plant itself. Over half the workers took part in the elections, while in the past only about a third had done
STOCKHOLM - In recent years, we have seen it again and again.
The Social Democratic bureaucracy has been tightening its grip over the union movement by combining the organizations into larger and larger units and narrowing the maneuvering room for broad opposition currents in the union elections. As this process has progressed, the left has found it more and more difficult to make any impact on the top level of the union movement.
This has led many people in the Swedish union movement and the mass media to regularly announce the death of the left opposition to the policies of the Social Democratic leadership. Of course, they say, there are a few plants that are the exceptions that prove the rule." The fact is that they have completely missed what has been happening at the grassroots level in many other places.
KJELL PETTERSSON
In a series of workplaces throughout Sweden, the left is stronger today in fact than it has been in a long time.
That was pointed up by a number of union elections in the spring and early summer.
Those who are fighting militant and democratic trade-union movement remain a distinct minority.
But both in industry and in social service sector
- for example, transit and the hospitals — left opposition currents have made advances.
These be explained can by three factors:
There is a growing gap between
- what the top union leaderships in the
National
Labor
Organization
[LandsOrganisation - LO] say and what a lot of working people feel should be done. Unemployment, open and still more so concealed, remains high.
The government is keeping
"anti-inflation ceiling"
an on wages.
Another issue is the shutting down of the Uddevalla shipyards, the most modern in the country, with 2,000 workers. So, discontent is growing, and the confidence gap is widening for the Social
Democratic government. At the time, opponents of the austerity policy are getting a greater hearing for their ideas in the unions.
period
In of
- a economic crisis, it is particularly important that the workers have organizations that can defend their interests. More and of them see the unions more organizations run from the top as which in the ordinary members have less and less This feeling is increasing possibilities for advancing democratic demands — a right to a voice in negotiations and in contracts and the same living standards for those who are supposed to represent the workers as for ordinary workers. who year after year have for their workmates in local contract struggles, against plant closures, and for greater union democ-
Despite the election year and the Social Demodoing everything possible to assure tranquility in the workplaces, of radical union policies more and more coming to the
In the local contract negotiations
Saab-Scania auto factory in factory union club five crowns (about US 75 cents) more an hour.
club leadership backed up this demand can be seen as a result of the work of the union yes, for the l it put up two radical candidates
The opposition now holds three of the six places in the end of 1984, it was disat the Granges Metall aluminium factory in Sundsvall had so. Six of the seven places in the club leadership went to candidates who had participated in the work of workers union, which includes the mass-transportation workers in the were held in a series of sections [districts] in the spring.
In sections No. 5 and 8, the union radicals have long had in the leadership. In these the radicals held their positions.
heartening were made in Section No 6. Under
"Trade-Union Renewal," a of Stockholm transit workers ran on the following demands: "No wages, and for building more membership participation through better dissemination of information and more democracy in the union."
"Trade-Union Renewal" ran candifor the Section leadership, for the delegates to the municipal workers union leadership, and for the editorial board of newspaper, Raka Spaaret ["Straight Track"]. All but one were elected by a good majority.
For an independent union, a voice membership, information those were some of the demands the "Trade-Union Alternative" in the elections in Section No 1, Branch [Avdelning] 34 of the municipal workers union in Uppsala.
Socialist Party [Swedish section of the Fourth International] union club in the university hospital ran six candidates for the branch leadership. Two were elected as full members and two as alternates. One of the Trade-Union Alternative candidates was also elected as an alternative to the section leader-
Moreover, for the first time indiviand shop level positions in a number of workplaces, such as Saab-Scania in Soedertaelje, the SSAB steel plant in Borlaenge, Atlas equipment, and 21
MEXICO and for this they are looking towards another bourgeois party, the Partido
Accion Nacional (PAN).
Thirdly, there is the question of cipat the
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