In search of a Swedish model : Ideas and alternatives in employer policies during 1897-1909

The period saw the founding of the first Swedish employers´ associations as a reaction to the preceding decades´ growth of industrial trade unions. Conflicting ideas fought about supremacy. Not only was the fight carried out across the social dividing line separating workers from the bourgeoisie, but also between groups on either side: hawks versus doves among employers; revolutionaries versus reformers among workers. The study uses an actor perspective, comparing three leading industrialists in their particular roles as employers. It analyzes the development of ideas over the period studied, using minutes from meetings, company memos, letters, speeches and newspapers as primary sources. In addition, it is action-orientated and analyzes major labour conflicts that were fought and agreements that were reached. It applies a split vision, taking into regard the contemporary views and actions of the labour unions. Its perspective moves between the individual, the company and the organizational levels, with the primary aim to see what changes in the traditional patriarchal employer policies that were considered and to what extent such changes were realized. A major result is the evidence of the irreconcilable views on the subject of strike breakers/loyal workers -- two conflicting terms for one phenomenon that indicate a gap between two different sets of values. Differing views among employers on how to relate to this gap caused frictions in the years 1906-09. The outcome of the general strike in 1909 ended in a harsh employer organizations policy for more than the two following decades. It was replaced by the mutual spirit, later known as the Swedish Model, materialized in the Saltsjöbaden general agreements of 1938