Högskolan i Skövde

This article explores the profound mismatch between the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and fundamentals for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The common survival of human life, society, and the global order as we know it, and the need for companies to make profit is not easy. The intractability of the problem is often underestimated in public as well as scientific debate. This article discusses the problem and possible ways to cope with it through 'social entrepreneurship' illustrated here by a study of nine firms in Sweden. The study draws on an amalgamation of Schumpeterian theory about "creative destruction"and the concept of "Emerging Davids vs. Greening Goliaths." 

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.

This chapter discusses the effects on women in Swedish working life. It explores the gendered patterns in bargaining strategies and the use of strikes. The chapter argues that gender differences in conflict patterns and bargaining strategies exist both among and within different industries. The collective agreement emerged in an unregulated field of law. Relations between the bargaining parties, as well as disputes over the content and application of collective agreements were solved via self-regulation. The rights of association and of negotiation are main components in the Swedish industrial relations system. The women’s organizations disappeared from the labour market in the heydays of the Swedish model and the solidaristic wage policy, but the different strategies between men and women remained. The new strategy is not only a result of a transformation of the collective bargaining system. The shift was also facilitated by some general changes in the labour market legislation.

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?

Diskussionen om hamnkonflikten i Göteborg har hittills saknat ett historiskt perspektiv. I denna essä visar forskaren Christer Thörnqvist att lagstiftning tidigare varit ineffektiv mot arbetsmarknadskonflikter, men däremot har uppenbara risker.

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 studiedBritain, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and the USApublic 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.

Företrädare för fack och arbetsgivare säger att risken för gula fack är minimal. Men lagar stiftas för framtiden och hur kommande generationer av arbetsgivare agerar finns det inga garantier för. Att ändra i strejkrätten för med sig stora risker, skriver Christer Thörnqvist, docent i arbetsvetenskap.