SWEDEN Workers' insurgency revives GRASSROOTS trade-union leaders and activists representing 200,000-300,000 workers met in Falun on September 12 to launch a campaign to influence the negotiations of the 1988 national labor contract coming up at the end of the year. Falun is in the province of Dalarna, identified in Swedish history with rebelliousness. GERRY FOLEY nicipal workers side by side, an end to the splitting! A proposal for a realwage increase that strengthens solidarity among workers, a thousand crowns more a month for everybody! Open negotiations and a referendum on the contract!"
The agenda at the Falun meeting included three points: the negotiations, the policy of economic distribution and democracy in the unions. The hall was filled all the time. Messages came in from many groups of workers, including one from 72 hospital supervisors in Göteborg calling for an end to the "reverse Robin Hood policy." A letter from Doctor Lars Person in Göteborg, who started the People's Campaign Against Social Cutbacks, got thundering applause.
Rolf Häggman from the 1,800member Ludvika ASEA club put forward his organization's program calling for a stress on benefits for the low-waged and a general increase for all. He called for a wage scale by which the lowest paid would get the biggest raises: "That was our proposal to the metalworkers' negotiating committee two years ago, but it was voted down," he said. The Volvo workers argued that a wage scale was too complicated. "Our proposal is for a thousand crowns for everyone."
Bosse Lindström from the 800member Boliden Kemis factory supported the thousand crowns demand, but also proposed cost-of-living increases. This was supported by speaker after speaker.
Christer Hagman from the Fix factory in Göteborg stressed: "We have to recognize that we only represent people to the extent that our people are active....Passive representation is pulling the union movement down."
Internationalen noted that Kilden got probably the biggest applause of the day for an attack on a proposal from LO leader Stig Malm for a punitive tax on wage increases that exceeded guidelines: "That is pure trade-union • suicide," Kilden said.
Support came from many groups of public workers: the Östra hospital in Göteborg, the Falun general hospital, pre-school teachers, playground leaders and postmen. The largest group were the 10,500-strong Stockholm public workers, in which the transit workers are a major force. They called for unity between private and public sector workers and for opposition to privatization.
The demands finally adopted included a thousand crowns for all, cost-of-living increases, a one-year contract and the demand proposed by women in the Falun general hospital for a seven hour day for day-shift workers and six hours for those on night-shifts. * 1. See the interview with Göte Kilden in /V 126, September 28, 1987.
T HE LATEST Dalarna rebellion, which began developing two years ago, was a workers' rebellion against falling real wages and social-democratic austerity. It was expressed in the Dalarna Appeal launched in December 1985. Since that time, it has been signed by 75,000 people. The rebellion was stopped by mass shock at the murder of Premier Olof Palme in February 1986. But with the approach of a new contract, workers' insurgency is rising again.
"It has been a long time since the 'Internationale' has rung out so forcefully in the Swedish workers movement," Håkon Blomqvist wrote in the September 17 issue of Internationalen, the paper of the Socialist Party, Swedish section of the Fourth International. "From a chock-full community center in Falun the signal went out to Sweden's workers and low-wage carners that the time when they have to take a beating is over."
In the opening speech, Åke Wiklund, leader of the Dalarna rebellion said "...We want to fight together for the cake we have baked but which is being eaten by those who are already rich."
Before the last national contract negotiations in 1985, the union leaderships at ASEA in Ludvika and SaabScania in Falun issued an appeal for an economic redistribution in favor of the workers, the Dalarna Appeal.
Wiklund described the purpose of the Falun meeting in the following way in the July 16 issue of Internationalen: "Our idea is to have people come from the lower levels of the unions, ordinary shop stewards and deputy shop stewards from the clubs. And we are not thinking only of industrial workers. We are thinking of all wage earners who are having a hard time economically: hos6 workers. For my part, i think we pital personnel, poorly paid public International Viewpoint • October 26, 1987 should bring in retired people living on pensions too."
The Falun meeting was not welcomed by the top union leaderships. They launched a campaign denouncing it as an altempt to create a parallel union.
In the run-up to the Falun meeting, Internationalen interviewed Göte Kilden, a leading SP member and tradeunionist at the Volvo truck plant in Göteborg. He said that the union leadership's campaign had faded. "Before, people tried to brand the national meeting [in Falun] as some sort of 'alternative' LO [National Labor Federation]. But we stressed that it was in no way an alternative to the LO. We even asked for travel money from the plant local, since we see the meeting as entirely within the framework of the activity of the metalworkers' union."
### Radical trade-union solutions
The Dalarna Appeal had gained broad support, even from social-democratic workers, Kilden said. "In Volvo, Group 6 [the spare parts department] with 7,000-8,000 members joined in. Its leadership is made up of members of the social-democratic party, but they backed the appeal and are sending a representative to Falun. The majority in the union clubs at Saab-Scania are social democrats and they decided unanimously to participate....
"Many social democrats are interested in radical trade-union solutions. They admit that they were taken in by the talk about the budget deficit." 1
The Falun meeting was to discuss proposals for the contract negotiations. Kilden described the program that was to be recommended by the delegation from Volvo Group 19: "[State] hands off the negotiations, no state incomes policy! Metalworkers and mu-
AROUND
THE
WORLD USA "For love, for life and for liberation" MORE THAN a quarter of a million people demonstrated in Washington on Sunday, October 11 for equal rights for lesbians and gay men and against the persecution and discrimination they currently suffer in the United States. The huge march was the highlight of five days of events organized by a broad-based national coalition, around the slogan "For love and for life, we're not going back!" (see IV 125). The success of the actions signalled the opening of a new stage in the battle for lesbian and gay liberation.
From early the same morning, demonstrators unrolled a gigantic quilt on Capitol Mall, made up of two thousand patchwork squares each containing the name of a dead AIDS victim and with an object sewn on or an embroidered picture symbolizing their life.
On June 30 this year, Supreme Court judges voted to affirm that laws against "sodomy" were constitutional, a decision that boosted both anger and support for the October actions. So, on the Tuesday following the demonstration, over two thousand protestors gathered outside the Supreme Court in a civil disobedience action (it is illegal to demonstrate there). According to Le Monde (October 15), over 600 of the protestors were arrested by police who, in a disgusting display, put on leather gloves before making the arrests.
An important initiative was taken during the days of action with the establishment of a lesbian and gay congress, with 350 people attending an initial meeting to help coordinate political activities nationwide.
In spite of the success of these actions in bringing heterosexism and the plight of AIDS victims onto the public agenda, the US Senate voted on October 14 to cut off federal funds for AIDS education programmes that "promote or encourage" homosexual sex. Their decision was prompted by the publication of a comic book showing safe sex between two men. The Senate's action is just one illustration of the uphill fight facing the movement.
As one of the organizers of the days of action, Kay Ostberg, said: "We've come to Washington to show our visibility, but also our strength, our anger, our resilience and our hope. This civil rights movement has come of age politically, and we are not going back to the days of silent suffering. We are here to demand an end to discrimination now." * SRI LANKA Accord won't bring peace THE DEAL concluded between Sri Lanka's president JR Jayawardene and Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi on July 29 has already turned the terms of the conflict between the Sinhalese dominated Colombo government and the Tamil rebels upside down twice.
The following are excerpts from statements by Fourth Internationalists in the region made before the outbreak of fighting between the Tamil Tigers and Indian forces. The first excerpts are from Marxist Outlook, the Englishlanguage magazine of the Inquilabi Communist Sangathan, Indian section of the Fourth International:
"For revolutionaries in India, the central task must to be point out the [Indian] hegemonistic implications of this Accord and the fact that it has been imposed on the militants. Opposition to India's hegemonist regional aspirations must be unconditional....
"Does it follow then that Indian revolutionists, since they cannot at this stage say that they are for the Accord, must oppose it? It is not for us to take such a stand. We can only affirm that we fully support the oppressed Tamil people's right to define their political future and to give them support in this respect...In that sense although we oppose the imposition of the Accord we must continue to back the efforts of the legitimate representative organizations of the Sri Lankan Tamils to take the steps they see fit to secure their future."
In a statement issued September 25, the Revolutionary Marxist Party, a sympathizing group of the Fourth International in Sri Lanka, declared:
"We do not consider that the Peace Accord.... will ensure either the liberation of the Tamil people of the North and East or guaranteed peace and stabil-
AROUND THE WORLD ity in the country as a whole. The essence of this agreement is the creation of a new division of power between the Sinhala and the Tamil bourgeoisie....
"Although the more backward sections of the Sinhala capitalist class are seeking to create the impression that this agreement was imposed on Sri Lanka by the Indian bourgeoisie, in fact this is not the reality. JR Jayawardene made this agreement because he realized that he was not capable of suppressing the Tamil resistance movement in the North and East militarily.