Tobias Karlsson

The History of the Swedish ATM: Sparfrämjandet and Metior

In this paper we describe the first decades of the history of the Swedish ATM (Automated teller machine). Sweden was one of the pioneers in using ATMs, starting with cash dispensers or cash machines in 1967. The first machine was made operational and shown to the press on July 6, 1967, in Uppsala at Upsala Sparbank, only one week after the first cash machine in the world was made operational in the UK. The Swedish machine was manufactured by the Malmo based company Metior. This paper seeks to document the origins and early development of cash machines by Swedish savings banks, employing oral as well as archival sources. Interestingly, we find that the key actor behind the ATM technology was not the saving banks’ computer company Spadab, but Sparframjandet, a company most known for its campaigns to encourage thrift among children.

Allocating job losses: the mass layoffs at the Swedish Tobacco Monopoly in 1921

Abstract This article analyses the mass layoffs carried through by the Swedish Tobacco Monopoly in 1921. As a state-owned enterprise, the Tobacco Monopoly was expected to treat its employees with particular care but was not restricted by formal rules regarding the order of selection. Drawing on both qualitative and quantitative evidence, it is shown that the companys layoff policy shifted dramatically over the course of the year. In the spring, the company acted according to existing praxis and applied the seniority principle when releasing workers. In the autumn, when machines for cigar production were about to be installed, the same principle was abandoned. This policy shift should be seen in the light of technological change. As cigar machines were introduced, the company no longer needed experienced workers for training new workers. The seniority principle for layoffs was never applied again in the industry for the rest of the inter-war period.

Risk Preferences and Gender Differences in Union Membership in Late Nineteenth-Century Swedish Manufacturing

ABSTRACT Women are generally seen as less inclined to join trade unions. This study matches firm–worker data from the Swedish cigar and printing industries around 1900 and examines information on men and women holding the same jobs; such data are rare but important for understanding gender gaps. The results explain the gender gap in union membership among compositors, but not among cigar workers. Differences in union membership varied considerably across firms, with the largest differences found in low-union-density cigar firms where indirect costs (that is, uncertainty and risk) accrued in particular to women workers. The lack of gender differences in mutual aid membership indicates that women were not hard to organize but avoided organizations associated with greater risk for employer retaliation and uncertain returns according to a cost–benefit analysis.

Gender, occupation, or workplace: what mattered for the gender gap in the Swedish tobacco industry?

Abstract Historical studies on earnings differentials are largely based on group data and much less so on micro-level data. We use detailed information from a nationwide survey that matches employers and employees and covers the entire tobacco industry in Sweden in 1898. When comparing the labour market outcomes of women to those of men, we find that the cost of being female varied across branches, which contributed to the overall earnings gap in the industry. Earnings differentials reflect horizontal as well as vertical segregation. Female workers were concentrated in the low-skilled segments of tobacco work but were not kept out of the skilled and better paid segments. Alongside with this, there are indications of a glass ceiling pattern; gender mattered more at the top of earnings distribution than at the bottom deciles. Where men and women actually performed the same tasks, gender mattered less for earnings, but due to segregation this was not the situation for all workers.