Not only in Volvo STOCKHOLM - In recent years, we have seen it again and again. The Social Democratic bureaucracy has been tightening its grip over the union movement by combining the organizations into larger and larger units and narrowing the maneuvering room for broad opposition currents in the union elections. As this process has progressed, the left has found it more and more difficult to make any impact on the top level of the union movement.
This has led many people in the Swedish union movement and the mass media to regularly announce the death of the left opposition to the policies of the Social Democratic leadership. Of course, they say, there are a few plants that are the exceptions that prove the rule." The fact is that they have completely missed what has been happening at the grassroots level in many other places.
embezzled about 140,000 crowns. The consequence of this was that the entire club leadership was forced out.
An interim leadership was put in until the elections that were scheduled for February. For the first time in Graenges' history, the election was conducted in the plant itself. Over half the workers took part in the elections, while in the past only about a third had done so. Six of the seven places in the club leadership went to candidates who had participated in the work of the union opposition.
In the Stockholm municipal workers union, which includes the mass-transportation workers in the Greater Stockholm area, elections were held in a series of sections [districts] in the spring.
In sections No. 5 and 8, the union radicals have long had a majority in the leadership. In these elections, the radicals held their positions.
Most heartening were the gains made in Section No 6. Under the name "Trade-Union Renewal," a group of Stockholm transit workers ran on the following demands: "No cutbacks in transit, no cuts in real wages, and for building more membership participation through better dissemination of information and more democracy in the union."
"Trade-Union Renewal" ran candidates for the Section leadership, for the delegates to the municipal workers union leadership, and for the editorial board of the union newspaper, Raka Spaaret ["Straight Track"]. All but one were elected by a good majority.
For an independent union, a voice for the membership, and better information for the members -those were some of the demands raised by the "Trade-Union Alternative" in the elections in Section No 1, Branch [Avdelning] 34 of the municipal workers union in Uppsala.
The Socialist Party [Swedish section of the Fourth International] union club in the university hospital ran six candidates for the branch [avdelning] leadership. Two were elected as full members and two as alternates. One of the Trade-Union Alternative candidates was also elected as an alternative to the section leadership.
Moreover, for the first time individual socialists have been elected to factory and shop level positions in a number of workplaces, such as Saab-Scania in Soedertaelje, the SSAB steel plant in Borlaenge, Atlas Avosverken in Oerebro, which produces mining equipment, and Sweden Boots rubber factory in Helsingborg. And the list seems certain to grow.
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KJELL PETTERSSON
In a series of workplaces throughout Sweden, the left is stronger today in fact than it has been in a long time. That was pointed up by a number of union elections in the spring and early summer.
Those who are fighting for a militant and democratic trade-union movement remain a distinct minority. But both in industry and in the social service sector - for example, transit and the hospitals - left opposition currents have made notable advances. These can be explained by three factors:
- There is a growing gap between what the top union leaderships in the National Labor Organization [LandsOrganisation - LO] say and what a lot of working people feel should be done. Unemployment, open and still more so concealed, remains high. The government is keeping an "anti-inflation ceiling" on wages. Another issue is the shutting down of the Uddevalla shipyards, the most modern in the country, with 2,000 workers. So, discontent is growing, and the confidence gap is widening for the Social Democratic government. At the time, opponents of the austerity policy are getting a greater hearing for their ideas in the unions.
- In a period of economie crisis, it is particularly important that the workers have organizations that can defend their interests. More and more of them see the unions as organizations run from the top in which the ordinary members have less and less say. This feeling is increasing possibilities for advancing democratic demands - a right to a voice in negotiations and in contracts and the same living standards for those who are supposed to represent the workers as for ordinary workers.
- If there are union activists who year after year have fought consistently for their workmates in local contract struggles, against plant closures, and for greater union democracy, then the way can open up for alternative. This is just what happened in the spring.
Despite the fact that this is an election year and the Social Democrats are doing everything possible to assure tranquility in the workplaces, supporters of radical union policies are more and more coming to the fore.
In the local contract negotiations at the Saab-Scania auto factory in Goteborg, the factory union club members demanded five crowns (about US 75 cents) more an hour. The fact that the club leadership backed up this demand can be seen as a result of the work of the union opposition. This year, it put up two radical candidates for the club leadership. Both were elected with clear margins. The opposition now holds three of the six places in the leadership.
At the end of 1984, it was discovered that the treasurer of the factory club at the Granges Metall aluminium factory in Sundsvall had
International Viewpoint 16 September 1985
MEXICO and for this they are looking towards another bourgeois party, the Partido
Accion Nacional (PAN).
Thirdly, there is the question of