THE car producer Volvo is the biggest company in Sweden. Its
Gothenburg factory is the largest in the whole of Scandinavia, with 13,000 blue-collar workers. Over 90% of them are members of the metalworkers union. At the end of February the Social Democrats were challenged by a joint left opposition in the elections to the central leadership of the union.
DICK FORSLUND
HIS was an event which received wide coverage in the Swedish media. The social democrats have led the union since the 1950s. Their control is of strategic impor tance to the Swedish trade union bureauстасу.
A defeat in this election would be another symbol of a social democracy in crisis, beginning to lose its long term dominance in the Swedish labour movement.
But Volvo's Gothenburg factory is also important for the Swedish employers federation. A good wage settlement at Volvo immediately reproduces itself throughout Swedish industry.
This would create new difficulties for the austerity policy of the Social Democratic government, with hundreds of thousands of public sector workers demanding similar agreements.
Thus both Swedish capitalism and social democracy needed a "responsible" leadership at Gothenburg. It was bound to be a big fight.
Campaign supported by a hundred workers
The left opposition went under the name of "Trade Union Independence" (TI). It was formed by a coalition of the Socialist Party (SP) and the Left Party (LP). Around a hundred workers actively participated in the campaign.
The TI contested 85 union posts, from chairperson to local shop steward, and representation on the Gothenburg trade union council. Twenty of the candidates were members of one of the two parties.
The main slogan of the campaign was "No to a trade union loyal to the government's economic policy! Yes to a trade union loyal to the interests of its members!"
TI attacked the bureaucratic privileges of the fulltime officials and argued that union representatives should continue to work on the production line rather than disappearing into offices. It was pointed out that bureaucratic control of the Swedish trade union movement was beginning to alienate young workers in particular.
Today many workers question their membership in the union and ask why they should pay 2-3% of their wage in dues to an organization that cannot prove its usefulness. In this context the opposition demanded the right (which does not currently exist) for the workers to vote on contracts before they are signed by the union.
International fight against bosses needed
Volvo is a multinational company and the opposition raised the need for international cooperation between unions to counter the international plans of the bosses.
The candidates also raised the question of the worldwide crisis of car production, pointing out that collective transport is the wave of the future, while increasing production of cars destroys the environment.
The social democratic campaign concentrated on the experience of the old leadership. It portrayed the opposition as strike-happy militants who would not take 1. At their congress in May 1990 the Left Party of Communists (VPK) changed their name to the Left Party. This was to symbolize the party's break with its Stalinist past after the events in Eastern Europe. Since then a discussion has been going on in the LP about its history, programme and future role. One result of this debate has been the decision of some LP locals to open up their slates to non-members of the LP. In the last parliamentary elections in Sweden the LP got 6.5% of the vote and 22 seats in parliament. The LP is one of six parties represented in parliament. The Socialist Party is the Swedish section of the Fourth International.
SWEDEN
This is however only one explanation of the final result of the election in which the social democrats won 66% of the vote, against 34% for the TI slate (on an unusually high turnout of 60%).
Speaking to the Socialist Party's weekly newspaper Internationalen, Göte Kildén said that the election showed that the social democrats still had the confidence of the majority on the shop floor. However, a close analSocialist Party supporter Lars Henriksson, as portrayed in the ysis of the results approaching workers individually and taking them to vote.
"Then a walk to the ballot ('Don't take any other papers and don't talk to anyone') where three social democrats and someone from the opposition are standing. At the ballot 'Don't talk to that guy. He's a communist'. 'Hey, are there two slates?! Well...
"Then vote. Then back to the assembly line and the two appointed fulltimers guide the next worker to the ballot".
In places where the opposition was strong or radicals had controlled the local union club for some time, the result was 50/50 or victory for the opposition.
This was the case with the Lundby lorry factory where Kildén is the chairperson of the local club. Here TI got 73% of the votes.
Kildén explained that the Gulf war and its coverage in the media also had an effect on the results. "We had some comrades with Arab propaganda of the Volvo social democrats the future of Volvo into consideration. It was claimed that the Volvo management would never engage in real negotiations with people who wanted revolution and that the opposition did not understand that negotiation also means making compromises. Göte Kildén, a well known Socialist Party leader and T1 candidate for chairperson, was attacked as power hungry and a Trotskyist. "This guy wants permanent revolution" was a headline repeated in the local newspapers.
The debate between Kildén and the main candidate of the social democrats, Olle Ludvigsson, started a month before the elections in local radio stations and newspapers. Both were interviewed in the national television news programme before the election. A month before the election the factory management declared that redundancies were necessary and that 800 people had to be sacked because of heavy losses in the profitability of the company. The social democrats responded by proposing negotiations on who should stay and who should go.
Unity proposals refused
The opposition proposed instead a cut in working hours from 8 to 7 hours with no loss of pay and argued that Volvo, after 10 years of fat profits, could pay for this without problems. They asked the social democrats for a truce and a united response against the bosses, but this was refused. The company's threats were well timed for the elections. They favoured the social democratic campaign, so heavily centred around the old leadership's ability to negotiate. The social democrats now argued that they could use their long record of mutual confidence with Volvo in the best interests of the workers.
ysis of the results from each factory department underlined the importance of having support in every area in order to win; without that, it was very difficult to beat the social democratic apparatus. The social democrats had around 400 people assigned on different trade union responsibilities. Paid by their party, they could canvass without loss of pay on the two days prior to the elections. The supporters of the TI slate had to punch out and lose 1400 s.kr. per person to do the same. The budget of the social democratic campaign came from party funds and amounted to 400,000 s.kr. while the campaign budget of the opposition was 30,000 s. kr. and was collected by sympathizers in the factory. Opposition puts question of power on agenda Kildén said that the social democrats had put such a huge effort in because the TI campaign had put the question of power over the union on the agenda. "I think that their huge effort is the main reason for this result. We underestimated their enormous strength in some parts of the factory and did not realize fully how fragile our own organization is in those places... "We really tried to win and I must admit that we are a bit disappointed. Many of us had anticipated getting at least around 45% of the votes". Lars Henriksson, another TI supporter, gives a picture of the reality of the campaign on some of the big assembly lines where both average age and trade union activity is low. In such places, where there were few TI activists present, the social democrats won easily. The social democrat campaigning style involved two trade union fulltimers names on our slate. I could see how some workers wrote "Arab scum" or "Saddam" on the slate of T1 before they threw them away.
"Anyway every third Volvo worker supported our campaign and I think it is an investment for the future. We'll be back for sure! I also want to point to the good cooperation with the members of the Left Party which is a new thing at Volvo". SP member on parliamentary slate
This cooperation between trades unionists from the LP and the SP was confirmed three weeks later.
At the LP nominating conference in Gothenburg, a large majority of delegates voted in favour of placing Göte Kildén in third place on the LP slate for this autumn's Swedish parliamentary election, despite the fact that he is a well known member of the SP.
At present the LP has two MPs from Gothenburg in parliament, and a good result for the slate would mean the small SP getting representation in the Swedish parliament for the first time.
A leader of the Gothenburg LP told the press after the conference that, even if Kildén was not elected, he would abstain and let him take his place in parliament when working class issues were on the agenda.
A minority at the conference attacked the alliance with the SP, arguing that the LP was opening itself to the extreme left, and would isolate itself in national politics.
A Volvo worker argued against this; "The alliance of the left at Volvo gave an opportunity for us, members of the LP at the Volvo plant, to wake up after being asleep for ten years.
"I will be ashamed in my work in the trade union if we don't give third place in our slate in the coming election to Göte 25 Kildén".