Mattias Bengtsson

Labour Market Policies in Transition: From Social Engineering to Standby-Ability

The advent of ‘the Swedish Model’ was related to questions of economic crisis and high unemployment levels in the 1920s. New ideas, connecting insufficient demand with unemployment, were embraced by the Social Democratic Party (Blyth 2001). In the 1930s, the Social Democratic gov-ernment took a more pro-active role in stabilizing employment on a high level. New arrangements between state, business and labour were insti-tutionalized through the Saltsjobaden Accord in 1938. At the end of the 1940s, following the government’s requests to moderate wage demands, the Rehn-Meidner Model was launched as an ingenious solution to the diverse aims of economic growth, full employment, price stability, and maintaining union solidarity.

On the road to transnational cooperation? Results from a survey of European trade unions

Economic globalization and political developments within the EU have put pressure upon trade unions to engage in cross-border cooperation. The most realistic step in the foreseeable future is transnational coordination of collective bargaining, but the process is still very much in its infancy. We use a web and postal survey of a large number of European trade unions to illuminate their current practices and their preferences for the future. The most common activity is exchange of information on collective agreements, followed by collaboration in training programmes for union representatives, and such cross-border cooperation primarily involves unions in manufacturing. Support for European collective bargaining is far from overwhelming, and unions are clearly divided on the idea of statutory minimum wages: this has rather strong support in Spain and Germany, but very little in Scandinavia.

Class and ideological orientations revisited: an exploration of class-based mechanisms†

Studies of the relationship between class position and political outlooks still only have a limited understanding of the class-related mechanisms that matter for ideological orientations. This article presents a comprehensive analysis of the mechanisms that link class position and left/right and authoritarian/libertarian orientations. Besides main factors such as income, career prospects, job security, education, class origin and class identification, the significance of work-related factors such as work autonomy, working in a team, a physically demanding job and a mentally demanding job is studied. The findings are based on a survey specifically designed for this purpose and collected in Sweden in 2008/2009. A great deal of the association between class position and left/right orientations is explained by socio-economic conditions; different classes sympathize with policies that will benefit them economically. Another important factor is class identification. Work-related factors also have relevance, but the effect of class position on left/right orientations works mainly through the remuneration system. Class position is also related to authoritarian/libertarian orientations. However, this relationship is less explained by socio-economic position per se, but is rather an effect of the educational system and its allocation of the workforce into different class positions. It also turns out that work-related factors do not explain the class effects; however, a physically demanding job shows a unique effect. Overall, our findings suggest that besides factors such as class position, income, education and class identification, we need to consider work-related aspects to derive a more complete understanding of the distribution of ideological orientations in Western societies.

In-work poverty and labour market trajectories: Poverty risks among the working population in 22 European countries:

Is in-work poverty a low-wage or an unemployment problem, and is it the same problem all across Europe? Because of the definitional ambiguity, we really do not know. In this article, we use longitudinal European Union-Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) data from 22 countries and derive a set of distinct clusters of labour market trajectories (LMTs) from information about monthly labour market position from a 36-month observation window and estimate in-work poverty risk for each LMT. The results show that in-work poverty is a problem that affects the self-employed and people in a marginal labour market position, that is, those who for different reasons move in and out of employment. Hence, in-work poverty is mainly an unemployment problem, not a low-wage problem. Besides the fact that the size of LMTs varies between countries, we also expected to find systematic country differences in the effect of LMTs. The analysis did not support that assumption.

Negotiating alone or through the union? Swedish employees' attitudes in 1997 and 2006

It is said that people today are less interested in collective solutions such as union representation, mainly as a result of the processes of individualization that dilute collectivist orientations. On the basis of survey data carried out in Sweden in 1997 and 2006, the article studies attitudes towards two ways of negotiating with the employer — through the union or individually. The results show a minor decrease concerning the union option, while the willingness to negotiate individually has somewhat increased. However, the perceived need for the union was still high in 2006 — six out of 10 employees agreed with the statement. Another main conclusion is that employees’ attitudes are clearly class-based, even though the class differences were somewhat smaller in 2006. Finally, young people are often seen as forerunners in adopting individualistic orientations. However, the results do not confirm that a collectivist attitude has been replaced by an individualistic leaning among younger employees.