Christer Thörnqvist

Their own stories – how Polish construction workers posted to Sweden experience their job situation, or resistance versus life projects

This study draws primarily on in-depth interviews with nine male Polish construction workers posted to Sweden in the early 2010s. The emphasis lies on their own experiences of being exposed to what they saw as unjust working conditions, and why they accept them or react against them. The overarching research questions are why Polish workers go to Sweden, and, more importantly, why they stay even when they feel unfairly treated or directly cheated by their employers. The main points of interest are wages, work environment, employment contracts and relations with different labour market players, including the EU. It was very clear that none of the Polish workers had ever heard of the EU Posted Workers Directive. Still, the lack of serious resistance, our study argues, was not because of poor knowledge about their legal rights, but was linked to a wish to fulfil a ‘life project’ back home in Poland, such as building a house, starting a company, being able to afford to start a family and raise children, or saving for retirement. This wish helped the workers to swallow ‘unfair’ treatment.

Do public sector industrial relations challenge the Swedish model

Abstract This article discusses recent developments in public sector labour relations in Sweden from a historical, gender and power relations perspective. The main question is whether these trends challenge the established Swedish industrial relations system. Our point of departure – yet chronologically also the point of arrival – is the Swedish Municipal Workers’ Union, Kommunal’s, exit from the coordinated wage setting model within the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (Landsorganisationen, LO) in 2015/2016. The immediate reason was that Kommunal, representing one-third of the LO members, including many low-paid women, turned down the LO’s proposal on a general wage increase for low-wage groups. Instead, Kommunal urged to upgrade wages for a specific member group, the auxiliary nurses. This broke an almost uninterrupted 20-year-long period of labour market cooperation and coordination that was introduced in 1997 through the so-called Industry Agreement (Industriavtalet). This agreement was launched in the wake of the deep financial crisis in the early 1990s, and the neoliberal move towards a complete decentralization of pay negotiations. How should this move by Kommunal be interpreted? Why, and when, has the centralized system become a straitjacket for Kommunal, when for decades it seemingly was a precondition for both private and public union strength?

Reconstructing resistance and renewal in public service unionism in the twenty-first century: lessons from a century of war and peace

Abstract This special issue uses the occasion of the centenary of the Whitley Commission Reports to illuminate the contemporary crisis in public service industrial relations from a historical perspective. In all six countries studied—Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and the USA—public service employment is labour intensive and quantitatively significant in the overall economy. Public services have also been major targets of neoliberal reforms, starting in the UK and the USA at the turn of the 1980s and in the other countries about a decade later. In addition, the relatively high union density and the political dimension of public services and public union strategies have been major targets of new public management and more latterly austerity. However, the regressive period has had a differential impact in different countries. In the liberal market economies of the UK and the USA, the neoliberal turn has destabilised traditional patterns of public sector industrial relations to greatest effect. While in the more coordinated market economies, traditional arrangements and values have been more resistant to austerity and neoliberal reforms. We attempt to shed light on these differential impacts through a critical analysis of the historical evolution of public sector industrial relations in each country.

Austerity and public sector trade union power: Before and after the crisis:

We use a power resources approach to examine the effects of the 2008–2009 financial and economic crisis on public sector trade union power in Germany, Spain, Sweden and the UK, comparing structural, organizational, institutional, societal and political power resources before and after the crisis. Unions’ power resources have (at least temporarily) weakened in Spain, with a similar but less pronounced trend in the UK; whereas in Sweden and Germany, one can detect ambiguous but slightly positive signals, which reflect neither the crisis nor opposition to austerity. As well as structural, organizational and institutional power resources, societal and political resources are decisive for public sector trade unions.