It’s the morning after the elections
and Sweden is waking up to a new political reality. The right of centre
coalition has won, not surprisingly following the final weeks’ polls.
What’s new is the fact that the Sweden Democrats – described by all but
themselves as far-right and anti-immigrant – have secured 20
parliamentary seats. They now hold the balance of power between the two
main political blocs. It’s a new and unusually fragile parliamentary
situation for Sweden, and the main talking point on 20 September. The
main election topics of debate – jobs, taxes, sickness benefits and
education – are put to one side for the time being.
New jobs to fight social exclusion
Jobs have been the main topic during the past parliament and during
the election. The conservative Moderaterna party was rebranded ‘the
workers’ party of today’ and oversaw a range of measures aimed at
creating new jobs and getting the unemployed back to work. New taxation
laws allowed people to write off costs related to cleaning, child care
and other home-related work. This was meant to create new jobs in the
service sector. Working tax credits were also introduced to make it
more attractive to take up jobs. Meanwhile there has been a tightening
of rules regulating unemployment and sickness benefits. There is now a
cap on sickness benefits. When it is reached, people are transferred
from the social insurance system to the job centre and given help to
make them available to the labour market. The changes to the sickness
benefit system were very controversial. Many public advisory bodies
voiced their concerns and media highlighted many cases of people
suffering as a result of the new regulations.
“The message has been ‘this is how you could end up if you don’t use
your ability to work’. You should work hard to find a job and be
prepared to move. I wouldn’t think they’d carry this disciplinary
exercise any further now. That could undermine trust and create an
image of inhumanity,” says professor Gunnar Aronsson, a working life
researcher at Stockholm University’s Department of Psychology.
Increased responsibility for the individual
Kenneth Abrahamsson, programme director at the Swedish Council for
Working Life and Social Research, says jobs have been and will remain
the main focus for the right of centre coalition – known as
Alliansen.
“When we heard about jobs, jobs, jobs during electioneering, it was
all about how to reduce social exclusion and how to get people back to
the labour market. Yet there has been little debate about the quality
of work places or the content of jobs,” he says.
Kenneth Abrahamsson sees a future where the individual will carry
more of the responsibility for his or her welfare and development – for
better or worse. A society offering both opportunities and risks
benefits some groups but harm others. If you successively reduce the
tax base you reduce the space for welfare services while the need for
them increases – not least in light of demographic developments.
Perhaps Sweden is heading towards an American model, although he feels
Swedish labour market conditions are still very different to North
American ones.
“The incentive structures we have created allow some to get back to
work, while others fall outside for longer periods.”
Work’s content a non-issue
The day after the election there is worry for working life’s future,
both among the Swedish Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) and the
Swedish Confederation for Professional Employees (TCO). Roger Mörtvik
is the public policy director at TCO. He feels important issues
concerning working environment and the content of work were reduced to
non-issues during the last parliament and during the election. Focus
remained on labour market issues.
“Work environment and working life issues became non-issues for
Alliansen. The Red-Green coalition alternative is a bit better, but not
much. There is hardly any debate about how people experience their work
situation. If I were to compare this to the crisis in the 1990s, there
was a campaign for more jobs and better jobs then. The bad jobs were to
be eliminated.”
He sees no signs of a re-focusing on working life issues during the
next parliament.
“It’s short-sighted. Many problems relating to social exclusion
depend on your experience in the work place, and policy-makers must
give us the right tools to tackle bad conditions in the work place and
in the working environment. I fear a repeat of the 1990s when sickness
leave sky-rocketed,” he says.
Tough times for the low-paid
Ulla Lindqvist, LO’s vice president, is also worried on the day
after the election. She has witnessed a range of negative changes
during the past parliament and sees no light at the end of the tunnel
as a new parliament starts work. Ulla Lindqvist lists some of the
things she fears are going to make matters worse. One is proposed
changes to LAS – the employment protection legislation. One
suggestion is for employers to no longer have to pay salaries to
workers who have been fired as long as there is a conflict over the
redundancy. There is also a suggestion to free employers from their
duty to allow employees to take further training. This could influence
union introductory training.
Apprenticeships are to run for 18 months, which effectively means an
extension of existing trial periods of employment. She also know other
parties in the Alliansen, like the Center Party, wish to remove LAS
altogether for employers with less than ten employees.
The other example is A-kassan – Sweden’s unemployment insurance
fund. At the beginning of the last parliament the membership
contribution was increased considerably, and the fund lost more than
400,000 members as a result. The government now wants to introduce an
obligatory insurance scheme. The cost would vary according to which
trade union you’re a member of. That will make matters worse for many
low-income workers and for the strength of our union, says Ulla
Lindqvist.
“It’s now important to mobilise and fight this deterioration and to
recruit even more union members. We need to be many to be strong,” she
says.
Is there a policy stipulating jobs must be created at any price?
“Yes, you could say that. Take the working tax credit, it’s a way of
pushing wages down in the long term. We risk more job insecurity and
lower wages,” she says.
Ulla Lindqvist says LO tried to push the issue of working
environment during the election but that it was very hard to get the
message through to the media. It’s an important question – the number
of accidents in the work place have increased while the Swedish Work
Environment Authority has had its budget reduced over the past four
years.
Mobilising for working life research
Both Ulla Lindqvist, Roger Mörtvik, Kenneth Abrahamsson and Gunnar
Aronsson want to see more working life research. One of the first
actions of the Alliansen during the last parliament was to scrap the
National Institute for Working Life. This has led to a deterioration of
research on working life, and Kenneth Abrahamsson would love to see
cross-party block cooperation to create a more solid base for working
life research. Gunnar Aronsson believes in a Nordic virtual institute
based on the Nordic model. Roger Mörtvik would like to see
comprehensive knowledge and research on working life.
“With the closure of the Institute for Working Life there’s no
longer a public body with the mandate to follow up issues of working
life and working environments in a comprehensive way. We were world
leaders on working life research, now we’re bottom. This is extremely
sad and there are no political ambitions these days,” says Roger
Mörtvik.
Gunnar Aronsson, who used to work for the Institute for Working
Life, says a lot of knowledge and competence on working environment,
sick leave and rehabilitation was lost when the Institute was closed.
Sickness leave has fallen over the past six years and it would have
been valuable both academically and for practical purposes to
understand the process behind those numbers. By the time of the
next elections in 2014, the last of the 1940s generation will be 65 and
ready to retire. A lot of people will be replaced, not least high up in
the public sector.
“There will be a lot of competition for public services and many of
those who will be hired are more individualised and career-minded than
today’s workers. That can lead to a sharper competition between them
and others who regard their job more as part of an ordinary life. There
could be an increase in pay and career gaps, yet the political blocks
have not yet explained what they will do about this,” says Gunnar
Aronsson.
