The Co-Determination Act; Order Prevails in Sweden

In Sweden, striking is illegal: this is the true face of the Nordic model today. 

The myth of Sweden as a unique beacon of workers’ rights, a so-called “exception” among capitalist nations, is one of the most pervasive lies of our time. This mythology, carefully cultivated by the bourgeoisie, suggests that Sweden operates outside the brutal mechanics of capital accumulation and exploitation. But in reality, Sweden is no more a bastion of workers’ rights than the United States or Italy—indeed, one could argue it is even worse. Beneath the surface of the ideology of the Nordic model lies the relentless suppression of the working class. At the same time, its democratic structures serve only to pacify labor and maintain the dominance of capital. The recent legal restrictions on the right to strike reveal the true face of Swedish social democracy: not a defender of the proletariat, but rather, as Lenin said “the liberal bourgeoisie grant reforms with one hand, and with the other always take them back, reduce them to naught, use them to enslave the workers, to divide them into separate groups and perpetuate wage-slavery.” (Lenin, Marxism and Reformism) Thus, withering the reforms to nothing, order prevails, and this fact is most evident in the 2019 decimation of the Co-Determination Act (MBL). 

Swedish labor policy has passed through several periods, and the Social Democrats first had to pass the Co-Determination Act to decimate it. So, from where did it arise?

The Co-Determination Act is among the most important laws governing the Swedish labor market. Like so many other important labor laws, it emerged from social democracy’s demands  for a more “democratic workplace” in early 1970s Sweden. 

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO), particularly the LO’s metalworkers’ and heavy industry sections, made this corporativist  project their own. It was the first time since the Saltsjöbaden Agreement in 1938 that the labor movement challenged the mythical “collective bargaining line.” The reformists, in response to the unruliness of the working class, promoted the workers’ demand. Full of delusion, the reformists believed they could have challenged the well-established exclusive right of the employer to manage and distribute labor.

What distinguishes this social democratic maneuver from earlier attempts is that it promoted labor law reforms through  law itself, rather than through bargaining as was the practice before. 

The social democrats, and their union, were not proactive agents in the events that characterized the ’60s wave. Rather, the shift to the “legislative line” was a response to, and a restraint of, proletarian organization and militancy. This proletarian wave of struggle was a consequence of events like the closures of the shipyards in Gothenburg, Bohuslän, and Blekinge and the export of capital to various industries. An example of this social misery is the collapse of the Swedish weaving industry. This development especially hurt the proletariat in the city of Norrköping. 20,000 jobs lost in a city of 80,000 residents. The developments were mirrored elsewhere, with virtually every industry that laid the foundation for the boom of Swedish industrial production in the post-war period laid barren.

The discontent of the Swedish proletariat manifested itself in the wildcat strikes, a growing pro-Chinese and syndicalist left, and a social misery of a kind rarely seen in the history of Swedish social democracy. The Social Democrats saw the rise of working-class organizations as a threat and thus became keenly interested and engaged in how the labor movement could be restrained and pacified. 

The social democrats saw two solutions, which went hand in hand. The first was mass surveillance, the goal of which was to profile political opponents within the unions and systematically neutralize subversive elements. The second was a series of pacifying reforms. 

This was the context in which the Act on Co-Determination in Working Life (1976:580) was passed. The Social Democrats were not just pressured by a working class, who were demanding change, but by the national bourgeoisie, who needed to suppress the labor movement. Many laws still in place today were passed during this time period, such as the Trade Union Representatives Act (1974), the Employment Protection Act (1974), the Right to Education Act (1975), and the Work Environment Act (1978). This reformist wave ended in the mid-1980s, due to the failed implementation of the employee funds (1984) – which social democrats have continually viewed as the holy grail and “the democratic road to socialism” – along with the subsequent crash of the 1990s.

The Co-Determination Act must be placed in its historical context. It was an attempt by the social democratic government to rein in the organization of the working class and, as usual, to prolong the working class’s servitude. 

Content of the law

While the Act is not called the No-Strike Clause Act, a core component of the Act is an anti-strike law. The law requires employers to inform and negotiate with trade unions about essential decisions affecting workers, such as restructuring or changes to working conditions. The MBL was initially intended (or at least ostensibly promoted) to strengthen workers’ influence over the employer’s decisions and to promote dialogue between employers and trade unions.

This law is about the unions’ right to information and the individual right to union membership. However, some things are very different from the international context, such as the fact that in Sweden a strike cannot be called by a local union, but can only be called at the “federal” level. This aspect of the proletariat’s life in Sweden has long been a legal custom. All the rights and obligations under the MBL pertain to trade unions, namely the right to information, the right to bargain, and the individual commitment to the no-strike clause. Exactly what happens in the rest of the world.

Changes to the no-strike clause in the Co-Determination Act 2019

The changes were only possible because of the enormous passivity of the Swedish working class. The social democratic method has somewhat changed since the 1980s, from the carrot to the stick, from granting reforms on the one hand, to taking them away on the other. This game, as well as the increasingly common and intense crises that Sweden has been experiencing since the 1990s, are the roots of his widespread passivity. The demolition of the welfare state intensified with the 1990s crisis, which was, among other things, a speculative crisis on the Swedish currency (Sweden kept a fixed exchange rate much longer than countries like America, Great Britain, or Italy). The crisis showed social democracy’s true face. It showed the nay-sayers that even in Sweden, the government is run by the economy, not vice versa. The welfare state was created to subjugate the proletariat , and was destroyed to subjugate it even more, to one day be able to be rebuilt and do it once more. It showed that “the so-called ‘welfare state’ fulfills, in this case, a multitude of functions in an economic, social, and ideological sense, the result of which is the maximum mystification of reality.” (The International Communist 1, Against Union Nationalism)

For every cut that was asked, it was given; for what Capital sought, it found; and to those who knocked, it was opened. Some worth mentioning are the Free School Reform (1992), and the Pension Reform (1994). With no signs of stopping, this tendency continues, and we can now add the slaughter of the Co-Determination Act to this almost endless pile of curtailments in social democracy.

Still, the question of “why now?” remains unanswered.

It began in 2016 with the Dockworkers’ Union and the port-operation company APM Terminals. The Dockers, independent of social democratic and liberal unions such as TCO and LO, wanted to enter into a collective bargaining agreement directly with APM Terminals Gothenburg, instead of being bound by the social-democratic union Transport’s contract with their mutual employer. Especially since they make up a sizable minority of the workers at the ports, and oftentimes the most radical syndicalists, they sought not to be bound by the frequently unsatisfactory Social Democratic trade union organization, LO. Their goal was to have the same negotiation and information rights, in line with the Co-Determination Act. However, the employer fought this hard, arguing that they did not need to make an agreement with more than one union at a workplace and thus wanted the Dockworkers’ Union members to remain bound by the agreement with Transport. The conflict between the Dockers and APM Terminals escalated from 2016-2019, with a full-blown strike and lockout breaking out on January 23, 2019. The Dockers won and got the agreement they wanted on March 5 that same year.

The bourgeoisie, instead of coming to terms with their losses, decided to wage a full offensive against the Dockers and set their sights on the decimation of the Co-Determination Act. The Löfven II cabinet picked up a proposal from the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise (Svenskt Näringsliv), proposition 2018/19:105, which utterly crushed the right to strike. This move was aimed squarely at independent unions like the Dockers. This law was already in the review and consultation process in 2017, and was expected to exit this phase by Q3 2019. Nevertheless, before the report could be produced, the big three social-democratic and liberal unions, LO, SACO, and TCO, already signed an agreement with the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, against the wishes of their rank-and-file membership. The social democrats threw the labor movement to the wolves. Restrictions on the right to strike were only supported by 2 of LO’s 14 affiliated unions, but after the union leaders reached an agreement with the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise (Svenskt Näringsliv), the party whip struck, and the unions voted in favor of the restrictions. This agreement became the basis for the government bill, which later became the law. Ultimately, the law came from the unions, even if parliament passed it.

So what’s changed?

In the 1976 version there were already strong restrictions on the possibilities reserved for workers’ organizations. Industrial action was illegal if it violated the no-strike clause of a collective bargaining agreement or if the purpose of industrial action was to:

1. Intervene in a dispute over the application of a collective agreement, its meaning, or whether something violated the agreement or the law.

2. Modify the contract.

3. Adopt a provision that would take effect after the expiration of the contract;

4. Acting in solidarity with an individual or organization in the presence of a no-strike clause.

Since 1976, successive governments have amended the law several times. For example, it is stipulated that if the labor confederations do not authorize a strike, it is illegal. A section of the law also contains the clause prohibiting strikes for purposes other than collective bargaining. Additional changes were made to this framework by the 2019 amendments.

The 2019 changes were as follows.

1. “Political strikes” are no longer allowed.
2. The strike weapon can no longer be used to modify collective agreements.
3. During the term of the contract, strike actions may be taken only those actions will be aimed at non-payment of wages.
4. Union A cannot strike without a collective agreement with union B. In this case, the agreement with union B applies to all workers, regardless of their organization.

The no-strike clause, which already existed, now applies to all trade unions at the workplace, even if only one of them has an agreement with the employer. The new law does not specify which union this must be or whether that union’s membership needs to constitute a majority of the trade unionists at the workplace. This has allowed an employer to choose which trade union they want to conclude an agreement with. Consequently, this has facilitated the creation of so-called yellow (company) unions. Although these have not yet materialized, they will be a new tool for the employer to further weaken the legal movement of the working class. Furthermore, this has led to the employer being able to pick and choose what union to bargain with, allowing them to select the cheapest contract, making a union such as the Dockers hamstrung and subordinate to the big three.

The law says that the only legal stoppages are those to collect debts, which must be accompanied by a clear demand. This means that strike action is de facto, if not de jure, illegal.

Thus, order prevails in Sweden. The order of the bourgeoisie—with their cohort of opportunist unions and opportunist parties—leads the proletariat to be sacrificed on the altar of profit. Their order, however, is built on sand.. Thus, Tomorrow, the revolution will rise on firm ground, and to their horror, it will proclaim with trumpets blazing: I was, I am, I shall be!