The labour movement in Sweden dates back to at least the 1850s, when

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

workers initiated the organizing of previously spontaneous

food riot Food riots may occur when there is a shortage and/or unequal distribution of food. Causes can be food price rises, harvest failures, incompetent food storage, transport problems, food speculation, hoarding, poisoning of food, or attacks by pes ...

s into strikes, hence acting as an autonomous group.

History

Modern types of

labour union A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits (su ...

s emerged in the 1870s. An event that is usually considered to be central in the early days of the Swedish labour movement is the lecture "Hvad vil Social-Demokraterna?" ("What do the Social Democrats want?") by

August Palm August Teodor Palm (5 February 1849 – 14 March 1922) was a Swedish socialist activist and a key person in introducing the then revolutionary social democratic labour movement in Sweden. Life Early activism The son of a school teacher ...

, at Hotel Stockholm in

Malmö Malmö (, ; da, Malmø ) is the largest city in the Swedish county (län) of Scania (Skåne). It is the third-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Gothenburg, and the sixth-largest city in the Nordic region, with a municipal popul ...

6 November 1881. Five years later, in 1886, Sweden's first national labour union,

Svenska Typografförbundet Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

, was founded.Björklund & Edin & Holmlund & Wadensjö (1996), p. 245. Another union of that sort,

Svenska Postmannaförbundet Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

, was founded later that same year. The labour movement soon divided into two parts, a political one and a union-specialized one. The union movement was organized in one central organization, the

Swedish Trade Union Confederation The Swedish Trade Union Confederation ( sv, Landsorganisationen i Sverige ; literally "National Organisation in Sweden"), commonly referred to as LO (), is a national trade union centre, an umbrella organisation for fourteen Swedish trade union ...

(LO), founded in 1898, with the aim to organize all national labour unions in one central organization. Parallel to, but closely associated with this movement is the

Swedish Social Democratic Party The Swedish Social Democratic Party, formally the Swedish Social Democratic Workers' Party ( sv, Sveriges socialdemokratiska arbetareparti ; S/SAP), usually referred to as The Social Democrats ( sv, link=no, Socialdemokraterna ), is a social-de ...

(SAP), founded in 1889. These two organizations has ever since dominated not only the Swedish labour movement but also the political life in general. One example of their close association is the fact that all members of LO was initially automatically made members of SAP. Even though LO has dominated labour relations in Sweden, the two other big confederations for unions, the

Swedish Confederation of Professional Employees The Confederation of Professional Employees ( sv, Tjänstemännens Centralorganisation, TCO) is a national trade union centre, the umbrella organisation for 13 trade unions in Sweden that organise professional and other qualified employees in bot ...

, TCO, and the Swedish Confederation of Professional Associations, SACO, are today almost as important participants as LO in the debate of labour economics. In 2008 for the first time the total number of active wage and salary members (i.e. excluding pensioner, students and self-employed) in TCO and SACO together surpassed that of LO. In the year before that (2007), the center-right government considerably raised the fees to unemployment funds, which in particular hit funds run by LO unions. The result was large membership losses of LO funds and LO unions and rapidly declining union density.Anders Kjellberg (2011
"The Decline in Swedish Union Density since 2007"
''Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies'' (NJWLS) Vol. 1. No 1 (August 2011), pp. 67-93 The declining number of LO members is also related to the decreasing share of blue-collar workers in the labour force.

References

Printed sources

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History

References

Printed sources

Notes

Further reading