Employee Participation in Sweden
| Date | 01 January 1979 |
| Published date | 01 January 1979 |
| Pages | 11-16 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb054922 |
| Author | Olof Lind |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Employee Participation in
Sweden
by Olof Lind
Swedish State Company Ltd, Statsföretag AB
1.
The Swedish Background
Sweden is a large country with a rather small population.
It has about 8 million inhabitants. The country is a con-
stitutional monarchy with a Parliament consisting of 349
members, all directly elected by the people for three-year
terms.
From 1932 up to 1976 the Social Democratic Labour
Party had been in power (either alone or as the senior
partner in coalition with non-socialist parties). Since
September 1976, when the Social Democrats lost their
majority in Parliament, we have had a Government of
Non-Socialist Parties (Conservative, Liberal and Centre).
The Social Democratic Party has by tradition a close
connection with, and a broad support by, the trade
unions. These facts have, of course, been very important
when we, during the last five years, have acquired an
extensive new labour market legislation in Sweden. But
it is also essential to emphasise that there has been no
furious political battles about these matters and that
most of this new legislation has been accepted with large
majorities when the Acts were passed by Parliament. So,
in fact, all political parties in Sweden (both socialist and
non-socialist parties) express their support to the develop-
ment of Industrial Democracy.
Sweden is nowadays a highly industrialised free mar-
ket economy. However, not long ago Sweden was an
agrarian country with a low standard of living and power
restricted to the few. The development during this cen-
tury has been remarkable and Sweden today can be de-
scribed as an affluent society approaching a post-
industrial pattern. The historical perspective from the
viewpoint of citizen and employee safety, security and
influence is reflected on the following page.
"Sweden today can be described
as an affluent society approaching
a post-industrial pattern"
The organisation of Swedish economy is based upon a
free market system. More than 90 per cent of Swedish
manufacturing industry is still in private hands—after 44
years of socialist party government. This fact, however,
does not mean that the State has been uninterested in
how industry is run and what goes on within the fac-
tories.
Parliament and Government have chosen other
means than ownership to obtain information and in-
fluence industrial enterprises. It is not quite without
reason you can hear Swedish business executives com-
plain about restrictions and obligations enforced by law.
And of course everyone in a society like Sweden is com-
plaining about the taxes. That is a very natural and
normal reaction to the fact that public expenditure in
Sweden is more than 50 per cent of the country's Gross
National Product.
During the past two years the Swedish economy has
suffered badly from a severe export marketing crisis. The
economic growth has practically expired, and as we have
been used to
3—4
per cent annual growth most of the
people feel very surprised and worried. Some prophets
of doom are telling us that we have reached the top and
cannot stay there forever. They fear that we may have
come to the end of Swedish prosperity. Of course these
—hopefully temporary—circumstances are an interesting
background to the social experiment which was started
by the Act on Employee Participation in Decision-
making.
Development of Swedish Industrial Democracy
Industrial democracy—which means the worker's parti-
cipation in management through information, joint con-
sultation and other means of influence—has been an
important issue on the Swedish labour market since
World War II. The development of this issue has of
course been largely determined by the strong trade union
movement in Sweden. About 95 per cent of the workers
and 75 per cent of the white-collar employees are mem-
bers of trade unions, and the unions are co-ordinated in
national confederations—one for the workers (LO) and
two for the white-collar employees (TCO and SACO/SR).
Today, the national confederations seem to have no prob-
lem co-operating and that means that the top union
leaders can communicate with the employers and the
Government very effectively. The employers are also well
organised in employers confederations. (The biggest is
SAF.)
Immediately after the war, emphasis was placed on
improving productivity and economic growth. For rather
a long period the efforts of the unions were very strongly
directed towards economic goals. As a consequence the
unions were very much in favour of productivity-increas-
ing methods and activities. The most important task was
to promote economic growth and to secure for the union
members the major part of the growing wealth by means
of tough collective bargaining for wages, salaries and
general employment conditions.
As time went by productivity developed, but gradually
during the 1960s some people began to observe certain
negative effects of the one-sided movement towards eco-
nomic prosperity. By 1968-69 these observations had
grown to a strong wave of criticism against the industrial
world and its values, which rolled over Sweden and many
other countries in the West. One constructive response
to these signals was an extensive research and experi-
mental programme, which was initiated in all sectors of
the labour market during the second half of the 1960s.
Employee Relations
1,1
1979 11
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