Suchergebnisse

Crafting the Movement presents an explanation of why the Swedish working class so unanimously adopted reformism during the interwar period. Jenny Jansson discusses the precarious time for the labor movement after the Russian Revolution in 1917 that sparked a trend towards radicalization among labor organizations and communist organizations throughout Europe and caused an identity crisis in class organizations. She reveals that the leadership of the Trade Union Confederation (LO) was well aware of the identity problems that the left-wing factions had created for the reformist unions. Crafting the Movement explains how this led labor movement leaders towards a re-formulation of the notion of the worker by constructing an organizational identity that downplayed class struggle and embraced discipline, peaceful solutions to labor market problems, and cooperation with the employers. As Jansson shows, study activities arranged by the Workers' Educational Association became the main tool of the Trade Union Confederation's identity policy in the 1920s and 1930s and its successful outcome paved the way for the well-known "Swedish Model." Thanks to generous funding from Uppsala University, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other Open Access repositories.

Although trade union revitalization processes have been thoroughly examined by industrial relations scholars, less is known about the implications of such processes on unions' self-image. This article addresses that gap in knowledge by investigating how the self-image of a major Swedish public-sector trade union, the SKTF/Vision, changed after a thorough revitalization process took place. The findings indicate that due to pressure resulting from public-sector privatization, the union abandoned much of its former self-image and replaced ideas of 'the collective' with individualism. This article analyzes these changes and discusses the implications for the union movement.

Although trade union revitalization processes have been thoroughly examined by industrial relations scholars, less is known about the implications of such processes on unions' self-image. This article addresses that gap in knowledge by investigating how the self-image of a major Swedish public-sector trade union, the SKTF/Vision, changed after a thorough revitalization process took place. The findings indicate that due to pressure resulting from public-sector privatization, the union abandoned much of its former self-image and replaced ideas of 'the collective' with individualism. This article analyzes these changes and discusses the implications for the union movement.

Crafting the Movement presents an explanation of why the Swedish working class so unanimously adopted reformism during the interwar period. Jenny Jansson discusses the precarious time for the labor movement after the Russian Revolution in 1917 that sparked a trend towards radicalization among labor organizations and communist organizations throughout Europe and caused an identity crisis in class organizations. She reveals that the leadership of the Trade Union Confederation (LO) was well aware of the identity problems that the left-wing factions had created for the reformist unions. Crafting the Movement explains how this led labor movement leaders towards a re-formulation of the notion of the worker by constructing an organizational identity that downplayed class struggle and embraced discipline, peaceful solutions to labor market problems, and cooperation with the employers. As Jansson shows, study activities arranged by the Workers' Educational Association became the main tool of the Trade Union Confederation's identity policy in the 1920s and 1930s and its successful outcome paved the way for the well-known "Swedish Model."

As discussed by Nistotskaya and D'Arcy in Chapter 2 on Sweden, a long tradition of generally high-quality institutions has paved the way for excellent state capacity. This chapter focuses on the twentieth century, a time when Sweden developed into a high-tax-rate country with extraordinary tax compliance—a unique combination. Sweden underwent a profound transformation in the middle of the twentieth century: The Social Democratic Party (Socialdemokratiska arbetarpartiet, or SAP) won the 1932 election and stayed in office for forty-four consecutive years. High union density and corporatism introduced in the postwar period gave extensive powers to the union movement and to employers' organizations. The "golden age" of social democracy—the 1950s and 1960s—was characterized by full employment, an expanding welfare state system that included benefits such as comprehensive all-inclusive social insurance schemes, and diminishing wage inequality. It was in this context that Sweden transformed from a country with low tax rates to a country with high tax rates. Swedes are today among the most heavily taxed people in the world. Interestingly, Sweden also has the highest level of tax compliance, an unexpected combination. How was such a transition possible? This chapter focuses on the sense-making of the tax system. More specifically, I examine how the SAP tried to create and reproduce tax morale while upholding the state's capacity to collect taxes. In democracies, governments need the electorate's support for their policies, regardless of the capacity of the state; of course, how citizens perceive politics is also important for winning elections. The political elite can play a crucial role by making sense of policies.

AbstractThe European labor movements developed in different directions during the twentieth century. The class formation literature has tried to explain these differences but left unexplored the internal dynamics of the labor movement and, above all, the differences in ideological schooling. Workers' education constitutes a forum for ideological schooling of members, and these educational settings can be identity constitutive and thus play an important part in the class formation process. In this article I analyze the institutions for workers' education in Sweden and Britain and I suggest that the variation of the design and practices of workers' education had an impact on the movements' developments in terms of identity formation and cohesiveness.

The trade union movement has been put under considerable pressure the past thirty years. Thetrend is global: trade unions' political influence and bargaining power have been pushed back asa result from globalization, and membership numbers have plummeted. As a response to thedevelopment, numerous attempts to "revitalize" the trade union movement have beenemployed. Scholars of industrial relations have taken an interest in these revitalizationprocesses and analyzed the strategies to reverse the trend. However, the research field hastaken less an interest in the internal changes that such renewal processes imply for the unions,a gap in our knowledge about trade unions that this paper aims to fill. More specifically, the paper aims to investigate how self‐perceptions changed as a result from a thorough renewalprocess in the Swedish trade union formerly known as SKTF (Svenskakommunaltjänstemannaförbundet), nowadays Vision. In order to capture self‐perceptions I examine the internal educations of SKTF. There are severalgood reasons for focusing on educations when analyzing identity: organizations' educationalsettings constitute the forum where members – new and old – are taught the aim of theorganization and how to act as organization members, this is the arena in which values arediscussed and ideological schooling takes place. Consequently, material used in such educationsshould express identity and culture of the organization, and if we want to study how renewalprocesses impact self‐perceptions, this is a good material to use. I analyze the internaleducations of SKTF during the time period 1970‐2015.

This open access book investigates how trade unions representing different social classes use YouTube videos for renewal purposes. Information and communication technology has undoubtedly offered new opportunities for social movements, but while research suggests that these new means of communication can be used for trade union revitalization, few studies have examined what unions actually do on social media. By analysing more than 4500 videos that have been uploaded by Swedish trade unions, Jansson and Uba explore how unions use YouTube to address issues such as recruiting new members, improving internal democracy, promoting political campaigns and constructing (new) self-images. The results demonstrate that trade unions representing a range of social classes use different revitalization strategies via YouTube. This research will be of use to students and scholars researching European politics and political participation, trade unionism and labour movements in the digital age.