Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - V. Social Movements - 1. Labour Questions and Social politics - Labour Contracts and Trade (Collective) Agreements. By E. B. Rinman - Labour Exchanges. By G. Huss
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v. social movements.
compact transcending the ordinary collective agreement, just as the
ordinary collective agreement transcends the individual contract. This
transcendent position appertains in some measure to the national trade
agreements (riksavtal) and to the regulations as to conciliation and arbitration
contained in them. The first decisive step in this direction was taken in
the riksavtal which was concluded in 1905 in settlement of a great labour
conflict in the Mechanical Works Industry.
The most instructive and most characteristic instance of independent
regulations as to conciliation and arbitration is afforded by the agreement (entitled
"Main Agreement, No. 1"), entered into in 1909 by the union of the employers
in the railway companies and the union of their employees. According to that
agreement, lock-outs, strikes, blockades, boycotting, and the like, are totally and
entirely excluded, and compulsory conciliation or arbitration is prescribed for all
disputes of whatsoever nature they may be. Compulsory adjustment is thus
extended not merely to questions of interpretation but to the actual substance
of future agreements. Accordingly, under this agreement the actual conditions
of employment may in the last resort be determined by arbitration, if the parties
have not already come to terms through the medium of negotiations or
conciliation.
The question as to the regulation of collective agreements by
legislative measures has been on the carpet since 1907, when the first
investigation into the subject was officially instituted. The proposals of 1910 and
1911, which, as has been mentioned, were thrown out by the
Riksdag, provided first and foremost for laws relating to collective agreements
and to a Board for disputes arising from such agreements. The reason
why both these proposals were rejected was the difficulty of coming
to terms as to the range of legal force to be assigned, in the interests of
industrial peace, to collective agreements over and beyond the legal force
inherent in the very nature of those agreements and its regulation
according to the civil law.
Labour Exchange.
From the natural desire of both employers and employees to get a
knowledge — when entering into contracts ■— of the existing supply of
labour and employment respectively, and to be able to make a choice,
have arisen, in Sweden as elsewhere, the measures taken for setting up
public labour exchanges.
In earlier times it was the duty of the craft-guilds to negotiate for labour
for the needs of the crafts. As regards agriculture, the employers and labourers
used to meet and to employ hands and take places respectively at the fairs,
especially the so-called people’s fairs. A private employment agency was also
started early for procuring domestic servants in towns. Certain abuses in this
activity, however, caused the State authorities to interfere, and there was
established in Stockholm, during the years 1732—1735, a public "address office",
where both masters and domestic servants in the metropolis were obliged to enter
their names when changing servants or places respectively.
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