Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - V. Social Movements - 1. Labour Questions and Social politics - Labour Conditions and Workmen's Wages. By B. Nyström - Organization of Workmen and Employers. By O. Järte and B. Nyström
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v. social movements.
by the Government. The lowest layer of State workmen consist of the
workmen who are engaged temporarily by the State authorities for work on the
railway line and railway construction, for the erection of telegraph and telephone
lines, and for the building or rebuilding of power works, canals, or the like.
Most of these workmen have work only during certain parts of the year (as a
rule in the summer season), and their hours of labour and wages are in most
cases determined, within the scope of the conditions and prices which obtain
in the ordinary labour market, by the administrative authorities who employ
them. In view of the fact that the conditions of employment and wages of
their fellow-workmen engaged in the service of private railways (personnel about
20 000), private telephone companies, and private power works are to a great
extent regulated by collective agreements, demands have been put forward
especially by the temporary class of State workmen for an organized collaboration
on the part of the workmen in settling the conditions of employment. These
demands have begun to win more and more attention.
The workman directly engaged in the service of the Communes numbered
in 1911, according to an investigation made by the Svenska stadsförbundet, the
Swedish Townships Association, about 12 000, close on two-thirds of which fell
alone to the cities of Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö, and Norrköping. Among
these communal workmen several main groups may be distinguished, according
to the institutions and works in which they are employed.
During the summer about 5 300 workmen are employed in the building and
maintenance of the roads, bridges, harbours, houses, and so on, of the urban
communities, whereas during the dark and cold season of the year, when work
of this nature is only carried on with considerable difficulty, close on a third
of these workmen are congéed. This kind of season work is also done by the
garden, forest, and agricultural labourers, and others employed by the
corporations, who numbered not fully 800 in January of the year 1911, whereas on
the first of July they had increased to 1 200. On the other hand, in
contradistinction from what is the case with these groups of workmen, constant
occupation the whole year round is apparently as a rule provided for the scavengers
of the city corporations, who number about 1 500 hands, as well as for the
4 500 workmen or so who are employed in the waterworks, gas and electricity
works, and trams belonging to the corporations.
But even these last-named group of more permanently engaged communal
workmen only in exceptional cases rank on a par with the subordinate State
officials referred to above, inasmuch as they usually have a less secure
engagement than the latter, and are not entitled to a pension (except at Gothenburg
and Malmö). However in recent years there has been a tendency to convert
the qualified working staff of the public utility services into a kind of communal
officials of lower grade, permanently engaged, with an annual salary and a rise
to a higher scale on attaining a certain age, and entitled to holidays, sick-relief,
and a pension.
Organization of Workmen and Employers.
Trade unions. It was only a quarter of a century after the introduction
of the so-called "liberty of trade" (as opposed to the restrictions of the
Guilds) and the ingress of the industrial revolution into Sweden that
modern trade unionism obtained a footing among the wage workers of the
country. In the eighteen-eighties trade unions also began to be formed in
most trades in all places of importance. The initiative proceeded in most
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