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MAIN ARTICLE
The Origins of the Swedish Wage Bargaining
Model
Erik Bengtsson*
Department of Economic History, Lunds Universitet, Lund, SE 220 07, Sweden
Corresponding author: Erik Bengtsson, email: erik.bengtsson@ekh.lu.se
Abstract
This paper revisits the development of the canonical Swedish wage bargaining model,
from the 1930s to the 1950s. The question at the core of the debate is: how did Sweden
achieve “good”wage bargaining institutions -- good, in the sense of facilitating investment,
employment, and controlled inflation? The conventional account focuses on the actions of
employers and trade unions in export industry, and a cross-class alliance between the two.
This paper questions this account. The paper builds on archival sources in the Swedish
Labour Movement’s Archives and Library in Stockholm: the minutes from the main
trade union confederation’s yearly wage policy discussions, in preparation for bargaining
rounds. In total, some 1,500 pages of wage policy discussion. I find that the export sector
cross-class alliance played a very small role, and that macro-corporatist concerns, that the
labour movement had to take responsibility of all of society and pursue a planned wage
policy, was much more important. This has theoretical implications for the analysis of
wage bargaining institutions in general and the Swedish model in particular.
Introduction
In the twentieth century, Sweden had one of the most successful labor movements in
the world. A reformist trade union movement and Social Democratic party in alliance
reached a high degree of influence, building a generous welfare state and an unusually
equal society.
1
Figuring out the “success concept”of the movement has attracted
much interest among researchers. The capacity for compromise, between various
societal interests and actors, tends to play a central role. The historian Geoff Eley
writes in his overview of the history of the Left, that: “Business acknowledged the
legitimacy of social democratic government, with its commitment to high wages,
social welfare, and full employment, while socialists conceded the sanctity of private
property, guaranteed private control of capital markets, and restrained union mili-
tancy in the interests of social peace.”
2
The economists Moene and Wallerstein
*Acknowledgements: thanks to Lucio Baccaro, Claes-Mikael Jonsson, Tobias Karlsson, Jakob Molinder,
Thomas Paster, Kathleen Thelen, and Erik Vestin for comments. This paper was presented at the SASE
conference in London, July 2015; thanks to all the participants for comments. I am grateful to Claes-
Mikael Jonsson and Zofia Teng for help with accessing the LO materials. Thanks to Charles och Elin
Lindleys stiftelse for a grant that allowed me time for the archival work needed for the paper.
© International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc., 2022. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms
of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted
re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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formulate it more generally: “Social democracy is, in essence, a series of political and
economic compromises.”
3
The compromises can be between business and labor,
and between economic growth and equality. Wage bargaining institutions are,
along with the welfare state and economic policy, at the core of this Social
Democratic institution-building.
This paper investigates precisely the evolution of wage bargaining institutions in
Sweden from the 1930s to the late 1950s. The arrangement of wage bargaining is cru-
cial in any society, in its effects on income distribution and inflation, and its impli-
cations for the strategies of companies. The conventional understanding of the
Swedish success story is that one particular wage policy was crucial: export-sector
led wage restraint was key to “how Social Democracy worked,”and was at the center
of the postwar Swedish model.
4
Trade unions and employers held back wages to facil-
itate investment and growth in high-productivity sectors, and this wage restraint was
combined with equalization between different sorts of workers. According to the
received wisdom, in an analysis proposed especially by the political scientist Peter
Swenson, this wage restraint was driven by an outsize influence of the export sectors,
and a class alliance between workers and employers in those sectors, such as engi-
neering. The macroeconomic logic at the heart of this argument is that export-sector
employers cannot compensate for high wage increases by pushing the costs onto con-
sumers and thereby increasing inflation—they are assumed to be price-takers in the
international markets—and therefore their wage leadership prevents a
wage-inflation-spiral.
5
Thus, export-sector led wage policy, created by an alliance
between unions and employers in the export sectors, was, in the conventional account
of the success of Swedish Social democracy, a crucial compromise.
6
The contribution of this paper is to provide a new analysis and explanation of the
Swedish postwar wage bargaining system. There are two reasons why it is important
to revisit the development of Swedish wage bargaining post-1938. One is the empir-
ical: The centrality of wage bargaining in the analysis of Swedish Social Democracy
and the postwar success story makes it important to understand. The second is the-
oretical. The impact of Swenson’s study is closely related to a theoretical shift in com-
parative political economy. “Swenson upended the conventional wisdom by revealing
that specific segments of business were prime movers in the push for centralization,”
say the leading institutionalists Kathleen Thelen and James Mahoney, and thereby
inspired the shift of focus to the employers, and away from the class conflict focus
of the power resources school.
7
As Svensson says in his analysis of the 1938
Saltsjöbaden Agreement, the conflict between internationally competing industry
and the sheltered sector is “primary to the opposition between labour and capital.”
8
The present paper shows that, at least in case of the centralization of Swedish wage
bargaining, the focus on the employer side as the driving force, and the focus on
cross-class coalitions, has been overstated in the new consensus.
The analysis builds on the central trade union wage bargaining papers from 1939
to 1959. They show that industry wage leadership was non-existent in the 1930s, and
that coherent, coordinated trade union wage policy only arose with the centralization
of wage bargaining in the 1950s, which in the literature has been considered as a dis-
cretely different event. I show that the responsible wage policy, which in the previous
literature has been attributed to a cross-class alliance of export sector employers,
2 Erik Bengtsson
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rather should be understood as an outcome of the postwar integration of wage policy
into a planned economic policy. In the concluding part, I discuss the theoretical
implications of re-interpreting the Swedish model.
The evolution of wage bargaining in Sweden: previous literature
The key question in the debate on Social Democracy and wage leadership—cf. the ref-
erences to Eley or Moene and Wallerstein above—is: How are wages restrained to
facilitate investment?
9
Trade unions are assumed to pursue their own interests, and
the risk is then that they push up wages too much that profits are hurt, and then
too is investment. One way of achieving wage restraint is to simply weaken the unions
so that they cannot raise wages—but that is not compatible with the Social
Democratic model. Instead, Social Democratic wage restraint—or more generally,
responsible wage policy—is assumed to have come from one of two mechanisms.
Either a centralized wage setting where those encompassing organizations who set
wages—centralized unions, centralized employers—are also the ones who would suf-
fer (higher unemployment or inflation) if wages are set too high. Since costs cannot
be shuffled to outside groups, unions in this centralized model behave responsibly.
10
The other way is not to centralize but to coordinate wage bargaining, under the lead-
ership of the export sector. Since export-sector employers cannot increase prices to
compensate for higher wages, without losing market shares and thereby causing
unemployment, unions in this sector are more restrained than those in other sectors.
Competing wage claims may be inflationary and cause wage-price spirals, but if all
claims are subordinated via coordination to those of export industry, then the prob-
lem is solved.
11
The received wisdom on the evolution of the Swedish wage bargaining system is
built on such logic.
12
Here, a responsible wage bargaining system evolved in the
1930s, as result of a cross-class compromise of employers and unions in
export-oriented industry. The leading scholar of this interpretation is Peter
Swenson, but the analysis is shared by several other scholars. In Swenson’s analyses
of the Swedish labor market in the 1930s, the key contradiction in the trade union
movement was between export sector unions, who wanted peaceful labor relations
and wage restraint to facilitate competition, and militant home-market sector unions
(especially in construction), who, unconstrained by concerns for international com-
petitiveness, frequently went on large strikes for higher wages. The 1938 Saltsjöbaden
Agreement between the unions (LO) and the employers (SAF) is famous for initiating a
period of labor peace and constructive class compromise.
13
In Swenson’s analysis, this
was deep down a cross-class alliance between export-sector unions and employers,
with the restrictions on conflicts in the agreement serving to stifle the construction
unions. Swenson argues, building on Åmark, that “both sides agreed that export industry
should play the role of the ‘wage leader,’while building wages should be held back.”
14
Swenson’s analysis has become the consensus position in research on Swedish wage bar-
gaining history, as shown by the anthology published for the seventieth anniversary of
the 1938 Saltsjöbaden Agreement, in which Svensson and Fregert elaborate upon
Swenson’s analysis of wage leadership as created in 1938.
15
In this narrative,
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post-1938 establishment of export-sector wage leadership is key to understanding the
subsequent Social Democratic success story: A cross-class alliance was at the heart of it.
However, neither Swenson nor any other scholar has shown any “smoking gun”
when it comes to the construction of export industry wage leadership. Swenson
does show that there were expressions of discontent from the metal workers with
the wages awarded to construction workers, but this does not mean that such discon-
tent was official LO policy.
16
Furthermore Swenson shows that in the 1920s and espe-
cially the 1930s, there was a discussion on both the employers’side and the union
side about the wage relationship between the home market sectors and the export sec-
tors.
17
Swenson also convincingly demonstrates that the well-known strength of the
Swedish trade union movement does not imply that employers have been weak: on
the contrary, they have been extraordinarily well-organized, and have forced unions’
hands several times. Specifically, Swenson has shown that, in the 1930s, SAF used the
cross-sector weapon of lockouts to nudge the LO into a centralizing direction. He
asserts that lockouts “gave organized capital in Sweden the ability to hammer unions
into a shape that made them useful as partners in centralized regulation of labor mar-
kets.”
18
This gives all the agency to the employers and none to the unions. But
Swenson does not show that wage negotiations in the 1930s or after Saltsjöbaden
were coordinated with the establishment of wage leadership by the export industries.
He shows only that after the construction conflict in 1933–1934 there was a one-off
reduction in the home market industries’wage advantage. In other words, the creation
of the wage leadership system—when, how and by whom—isstillanopenquestion.
Empirical approach
Which materials should be used to trace the evolution of wage bargaining institutions
in Sweden after the 1938 Saltsjöbaden Agreement? In the beginning of this period,
collective agreements typically lasted a year.
19
The agreements ended in early spring,
and negotiations were held in the autumn and winter. The LO’s discussion of the
upcoming bargaining round was at the autumn meeting of the Representation
(Representantskap). There, the LO stated their aims in the upcoming bargaining
round, and gave a bargaining commission the right to bargain with the employers.
The Representation was a twice-yearly conference that was the highest decision-
making board between the congresses (which were held every fifth year), and gath-
ered representatives of all the LO’s member unions. The representatives, who took
part in the meetings, were typically high representatives from the member unions,
but could also be rank-and-file members. The minutes of the meeting were verbatim
records of the discussions, which make them very useful for historical research. The
discussions were expressly secret and each meeting began with an agreement that the
discussions must not leak out of the meeting room. This makes the minutes especially
reliable. They were not doctored with a critical audience in mind, but were as forth-
right as possible, so they could work as internal evidence of the policies that the LO
had decided upon.
Herein, I use the Representation minutes, in the LO archive at the Labour
Movement’s Archive and Library in Huddinge outside of Stockholm.
20
If wages
were coordinated in the form of wage leadership by the export industry, we will
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find this in the aims and instructions formulated at the Representation, as well as the
evaluations of the previous wage rounds. This source should be especially good for
picking up any internal conflict in the LO, such as the sectoral differences discussed
in the previous literature.
I have studied the Representation minutes from the year after the Saltsjöbaden
Agreement, 1939 to 1959. The study begins in 1939, as Swenson and Åmark have
claimed that the 1938 Saltsjöbaden Agreement was central for the LO’s wage policy.
21
It ends in 1959 when wage coordination was well under way. This end point is also
motivated by the fact that the Representation minutes become much less informative
after 1960. From 1960 on, the minutes are no longer verbatim. However, since the
classical Swedish model investigated here had already been established,
22
the chang-
ing character of the minutes is not a problem for the present study, although the
Representation minutes are not sufficient for studying wage policy in the 1960s.
The minutes will be referenced by month, year, and page.
Studying the evolution of wage bargaining based on primary materials from only
one of the labor market parties is in its nature one-sided. Nevertheless, that is how the
present article proceeds. This entails some limitations. But on the core issue of establish-
ing how the wage leadership system was established in Sweden, the materials used here
aresufficient.TheRepresentationprovidedthemandateforthenegotiatorsoftheLO
every year, and the negotiators reported back to the Representation. Thus, any type
of bargaining coordination or centralization implemented will be visible in these archival
materials. However, while we do get the reports of negotiators and the LO leadership
when they have discussed or negotiated with employers, it is difficult to capture a
broader building of cross-class trust. I will get back to this issue in the conclusion.
The transformation of wage bargaining: The rise of the Swedish Model
The road to a coordinated wage policy was much slower and indirect than the previ-
ous literature has suggested. Already the wage policy discussions of the LO during the
years immediately after the 1938 Saltsjöbaden Agreement show, contrary to the con-
ventional understanding, no trace of export-sector wage leadership.
23
Wage bargain-
ing was predominantly local and the LO had neither the formal nor the informal
capacity to coordinate wage policy. In 1938, only sixteen of the thirty-two LO unions
had any national collective agreements while the other sixteen stuck to the traditional
model of local agreements. Only 37 percent of LO members were covered by a
national agreement. Of course with local agreements, national coordination with
the other unions is more or less impossible. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, a crit-
ical minority within the LO had grown, arguing for a more centralized, more ambi-
tious, and more “solidaristic”or “socialist”wage policy. At this point, however, these
ambitions foundered on a leadership pessimistic about the possibility that wage policy
could change the wage structure. In practice, wage policy in the 1930s followed the
principle of “everyone get what you can.”
24
With the exception for years of wage
freezes and extreme restraint during World War II and just after, this was true for
the 1940s, too. In practice, bargaining oscillated between complete decentralization
and central inflation indexing; there was no proactive trade union wage policy at
all. The many statements of intention—for a more ambitious, more coordinated
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wage policy—from various actors in the LO and SAF was at this point only argu-
ments, not descriptions of what actually occurred. Ullenhag sums up LO’s solidaristic
wage policy debates in the 1930s and 1940s as “active debating—little concretization.”
The same is true for any principled wage policy.
25
The LO simply did not have the power or capacity or will to pursue a systematic
wage policy. Table 1 shows the growing importance of the trade union confederation,
the LO, for wage policy over time. At the beginning of the period, the joint wage pol-
icy discussions were short and most of the member unions did not bother to voice an
opinion. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the salience of a joint wage policy grew.
The bumpy road to a coherent and coordinated wage policy
The wage leadership model can be broken down into two constituent parts. One, the
consideration of sectoral differences, and the allocation of a special role in wage bar-
gaining or one sector (exporting industry). Two, the coordination of wage policy, and
the implementation of sector-specific policies. Both aspects were amply discussed in
trade union movement in the 1940s.
The topic of competition between unions and the need for more coordination on
that point was a recurring discussion. In 1941, Oscar Westerlund from the Metal
Workers,in a dissenting point of view, supported centralization of bargaining, saying
that the last couple of years had been chaotic, and that more planning was needed. He
clarified his point:
A bargaining round for one union has repercussions also for other unions. We
remember that the public servants (Sw. statstjänarna) went ahead and reached
an agreement which then became a precedent for the other groups. At any
time it might happen, for example, that the Metal Workers went first.
26
Westerlund had a point, but the prevailing preference of many unions for a
mind-your-own-business-kind of wage policy stopped any coordination such as
that he preferred. It is also interesting to see that the group competition that he alludes
to is between public servants and workers, not between export-sector and home-sector
workers as we might expect from the previous literature. Again and again, the multidi-
mensional distributional conflicts of wage policy crop up in the debates. In 1949,
Engstrand from the Wood Industry Workers (Träindustriarbetareförbundet) pointed
out that the government, in this time of massive intervention in agricultural markets,
in practice had given a pay raise to the farmers with the last added subsidy.
Thereby, the government had admitted exceptions to its anti-inflationary policy, and
so it should also be possible to pursue wage increases for the low paid of the LO.
27
Again, in relation to the literature, it is interesting that the construction workers are
not the criticized groups; rather, LO wage coordination is seen in a much wider context,
including government support to farmers.
28
In 1948, similar complaints of group competition were made, but with a new
dimension: they were then explicitly put in terms of exporting sectors versus home-
market sectors. This is the first time in my material where the distinction between
export and home-market industries is used in a discussion of future wage policy.
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Henry Hansson from the Factory Workers (Grov-och fabriksarbetareförbundet) com-
plained about the lack of coordination in the last bargaining round (1946–1947)
where some home-market unions such as the Typographers in the end got away
with good wage increases, since they were not threatened by foreign competition.
Hansson suggested that “the leadership should before the next meeting put forward
a proposal which makes it possible to follow a unitary line, to avoid pure anarchy.”
Representatives of the export sectors argued for a coordinated wage policy to make
their sectors more attractive for workers in terms of the wages offered.
29
Again and again, the discontent with the laissez faire of LO wage policy was for-
mulated. The recurring complaints indicate the stagnation of actual policy develop-
ment. By 1949, a prolongation agreement of the previous year had provided wage
increases across the board, but wage drift, i.e., workplace-level pay increases outside
of what had been formally negotiated, was unequally distributed. Gunnar Lantz from
Table 1. The quantitative extent of the wage policy discussions at the representation
Number of pages Number of statements Number of unions participating
1939 21 20 12
1940 16 23 4
1941 44 28 8
1942 24 26 11
1943 14 17 9
1944 23 21 13
1945 15 9 4
1946 28 39 16
1947 19 23 9
1948 74 47 25
1949 261 86 37
1950 67 17 6
1951 174 46 19
1952 167 67 28
1953 53 20 5
1954 50 12 5
1955 103 36 14
1956 115 47 21
1957 81 30 15
1958 89 31 21
1959 46 20 10
Note. Source: own calculations from the Representation minutes in the LO archive, ARBARK 2964/A/2/A.
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the amalgamated United Unions
30
was unhappy with this issue and argued for a
more proactive union line in the 1949–1950 bargaining round:
Is not there another line? It’s said that either we have full prolongation or we let
the bunch loose, and then we know where it’s going. It’s sometimes said that the
Swedish union movement is stable and strong. But is not it a declaration of
weakness to argue that there is nothing between absolute restraint, prolongation,
and each union fighting for itself on its own front?
31
To understand why there was so little progress in terms of regulation of inter-sector
differences, we must move to the second issue outlined above: the practical coordina-
tion of wage policy. The first discussant in my material to raise the connection
between the two aspects was Oskar Karlén from the Wood Industry Workers’
union in 1947. He then made a wide-ranging and visionary statement:
we should be able to agree to apply the method, that the low-paid come first in
the bargaining round. We have changed the LO’s statutes to make such a wage
policy possible, but apparently we are not yet mature enough to apply the stat-
utes in this respect. /…/ we run the risk that things will work out as before: each
union takes what it can possible, without any regard for the common concern to
restrain prices. /…/ I would ask the Secretariat to look more closely on the pro-
posal and re-formulate it so that it becomes possible for the Secretariat to keep
the unions’bargaining rounds together and steer them.
32
However, Karlén’s proposal was dismissed, with arguments such as that the LO
Secretariat would not have the necessary expertise to coordinate all the collective
agreements from the member unions. This was probably more of a pretext: of course
the LO could have built up such expertise if they wanted to. But the evasive argument
is indicative of the deep-rooted opposition in the LO to more coordination. In the
1941 debate, where Westerlund complained about the lack of coordination, a princi-
pal discussion of more coordination in the future met some very intense criticism,
called “Soviet wage policy”(the Foundry workers) and threats of unions leaving
the confederation (the Typographers) if the program would be realized.
We must trace the evolution of the opposite view that wage policy should indeed
be coordinated. A recurrent theme was that now that the trade union movement had
reached a position of power, it must act responsibly. In 1942, the LO chairman August
Lindberg stated:
We cannot pursue a wage policy independent of society’s economic policy. Our
bargaining rounds grow ever less a matter between us and the employers,
because the bargaining affects social policy overall.
33
This is, of course, completely in line with the macroeconomic discussion in section
two: Calmfors-Driffill would say precisely that a centralized trade union could be
responsible, because it must consider the implications of its actions for all of society.
In this spirit, in 1948, the Representation held a wide-ranging discussion on the
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theme of wage policy in a full employment society with economic planning. By now,
Sweden had had a Social Democrat-led government, closely affiliated to the trade
union movement, for sixteen years, and economic planning was du jour, a develop-
ment reinforced by the Second World War. “It appears,”the LO-affiliated lawyer
Arnold Sölvén argued, “that wage policy must be subordinated to general economic
planning.”
34
Sölvén argued that no social movement could be above the law, and that
this was true also for collective bargaining, but that to avoid direct state intervention
in bargaining rounds the LO would need to coordinate its wage policies more closely.
In the discussion, several representatives expressed support for a more activist LO
wage policy. Representatives of the Factory Workers and Telegraph and Telephone
Workers argued for a more coordinated wage policy, including the creation of a
wage policy council or research institute, to encourage the development of wage pol-
icy. The Sawmill Workers agreed that the LO should view wages in a more macroeco-
nomic way, and Gustav Vahlberg from the Secretariat (previously the Metal Workers)
stressed the need for planning:
Allow me to be a bit brash and say that the trade union movement, which is the
movement in the country which basically carries Social Democracy and a Social
Democratic government, and time after time calls for planning, and time after
time calls for solidarity between social groups, when we inspect ourselves
from the outside, we do not show a lot of what we tell others they should man-
ifest. The last couple of bargaining rounds show very strikingly that we are lack-
ing in internal solidarity.
35
This is crucial. In the late 1940s the LO still had no systematic wage policy. But they
were part of the perhaps most powerful labor movement in the world, in their own
country, and the discussion of the new possibilities of wage bargaining intensified.
One can almost see when reading the Representation protocols from the late 1930s
to the late 1950s how over time the old “mind your own business”mentality of the
constituent unions, reflective of the multitude of unions existing in early twentieth
century Sweden, faded away. It was replaced by a much more centralized, “responsi-
ble”mentality, where a union leader should not only care for his (at this time, it was
“his”) own members, but for society as a whole—and the Social Democratic project.
A wage bargaining model for a Social Democratic full employment society
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, there was a qualitative shift in the LO wage debates.
A new element was that economists and experts were becoming central. In the unco-
ordinated wage bargaining rounds of the 1930s and 1940s, there was no need for
macroeconomics: the policy was basically that each union should attempt to get as
much as possible, without regard for the economy as a whole. But in the late
1940s, the discussions turned decisively to wage policy as a responsible part of overall
economic and social policy, and then macroeconomic projections were needed.
36
In 1949, the Representation discussed a proposal to start an LO research institute.
Two interesting arguments for LO research were presented: one, that in a full employ-
ment society the trade unions were part of the overall economic policy and therefore
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must have the expertise to take part in planning economic policy and public commis-
sions. Two, that “a rational and more centralized wage policy makes considerable
demands on the LO’s capacities for an effective planning and design of wage rounds.”
37
The research institute proposal started a major debate at the Representation and had
overwhelming support. The only critic argued in a markedly antimodernist way that
psychology was more important than economics in bargaining rounds, and that the
influence of economists would lead to a more conservative wage and strike policy.
The complaint was not heeded; the economists perceptibly gained ground in the
1949 debates. At the autumn meeting of the Representation, the wage policy discus-
sion was introduced both in a statement by the Finance Minister (Per Edvin Sköld)
and, crucially, one by the LO economist Rudolf Meidner. Not coincidentally, this was
also the year when a programmatic statement was made in favor of a completely new
order of wage bargaining, with calculations of the possible scope for total wage
increases, and a centralized allocation of who should get what. The daring proposal,
a milestone in LO wage policy, came from Knut Larsson from the Wood Industry
Workers:
there is some scope for wage adjustments. These should then in the first place
come to low-paid groups of workers /…/ Representation should commission
the Secretariat to review the member unions’proposals for wage adjustments.
/…/ The Secretariat would then reconcile the proposals, so that the estimated
total result of the wage rounds would fall within the framework of what is pos-
sible without disturbing the macroeconomic balance.
38
This represents the most developed sketch so far of a truly coordinated wage policy
and includes the calculation of a “room”or framework for total wage increases; cen-
tralized calculation and decision-making about distributing the “room”among the
workers; and the transfer of bargaining authority to the center.
Such an elaborate proposal was possible in the new context of macroeconomic
expertise. In 1949, for the first time the LO wage discussion extended to the potential
size of the total wage increases. Implicitly, this was about maximizing wage-earners’
gains without harming the economy. Naturally, the calculations differed: The Finance
Minister argued that the scope was between 300 and 500 million kronor, while the LO
economist Meidner claimed 600–700 million.
39
But the important part here is simply
the new technocratic influence over policy, that it was considered relevant at all to
calculate a total “room”for wage increases. Meidner admitted that it was controversial
for a functionary like him to take a stand in wage policy debates, and this was not
unnoticed. One unionist claimed that “our economists look something like the der-
vishes of our time. I am aware that we need these people to help us, but something
seems to have happened lately. Something must have been added to their food.”
40
In the 1949 bargaining round, the LO economists very concretely introduced a
more macroeconomic understanding of wage policy. For the first time in the bargain-
ing rounds investigated here, they also presented an inventory of the wages for all the
LO groups. This gave rise to a long discussion about which groups should be consid-
ered low-paid and therefore prioritized in the bargaining round, and how this solid-
aristic aim could be accommodated in a macroeconomic framework. In this
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discussion, the representatives of quite a few unions—the lithographers, brewery
workers, transport workers, wood industry workers, paper workers, etc. —debated
precisely the issue of which groups were low paid and how this could be determined.
As a representative of Wood remarked, “probably no-one among us can explain what
solidaristic wage policy means.”
41
With hindsight one can say that defining “solidar-
istic wage policy”was precisely what they were up to in debating the descriptions of
various workers claimed to be low-paid by different member unions, with their dif-
ferent demands, and how they could be made to add up to the estimated room for
total LO wage increases.
The greater capacity for wage policy coordination—and solidarity—must be seen
in the macroeconomic context, and in the context of post-war enthusiasm for eco-
nomic planning. Mohlne from the Factory Workers was certain that “the develop-
ment will forcefully cause greater planning in wage policy,”and Näslund from the
Wood Workers was equally confident, proclaiming that “the government should
always intervene with union policy, at least when it’s a Social Democratic govern-
ment,”and that the LO and the government should always consult each other. The
general tenor was that the age of free wage policy was over, and that somehow
under the conditions of full employment a coordinated and differentiated wage policy
should be combined with stabilization.
42
Lantz argued that the proposals put forward
by each of the member unions added up to about the same as the wage room found
by Sköld, which, Lantz argued, refuted the view that the Swedish trade union move-
ment would not be mature enough to supply a differentiated wage policy in a tough
economic situation.
43
Similarly, the wage debate in the following year, 1950, started from a calculation of
the room for total wage increases—700 or 800 million kronor, according to Finance
Minister Sköld—and how this should be distributed.
44
The wider political context
invoked by Sköld was the need to keep the farmers as coalition partner happy, and
the diatribes of the Communists against company profits. Again, we must see that
contrary to the assumptions in the existing literature of the home market worker
vs export market worker as the crucial conflict, the conflicts of the wage bargaining
rounds were much more many dimensional than that, including the classic worker vs.
capital conflict as well as farmers and other groups. At the August 1950 meeting, the
LO chairman advocated a return to the war-time practice of extra taxes in sectors with
high profits. This issue stuck. The year after, the high inflation induced by the Korea
War continued, and so did the high profits in certain export sectors. Sköld main-
tained that “we must attack the profit boom”–but with tax policy rather than
wage policy.
45
The practice of coordinated wage policy
In 1951, the LO’s official policy was for the first time a coordinated bargaining round
with differentiated/solidaristic pay increases. Lantz from the United Unions was jubi-
lant that the Secretariat had come around to the position—a centralized, solidaristic
wage policy—that he had espoused already in 1949. The policy built on a calculation
of the room for wage increases, and the LO chairman Strand presented a model where
the growth of the total wage sum would be 4 percent but that especially prioritized
International Labor and Working‐Class History 11
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groups, such as farm workers and forestry workers, would get 9–10 percent. The LO
economist Rehn emphasized the difficulty for the economists to calculate the room
for wage increases, but did report that 4–5 percent real wage increases compared
to 1950 would be possible without “a price increase, which would be too provocative.”
Finally, then, the LO had arrived at a fully-fledged coordinated wage policy; the wage
policy statement of the Representation gave the Secretariat the task of negotiating cen-
trally with the SAF, and instructed the member unions to coordinate their demands.
46
With regard to the actual implementation of a solidaristic wage policy, very con-
crete detailed proposals were put forward. Representatives of metal, forestry, munic-
ipality, and other unions expressed support for the innovation, but submitted
opinions—not without an eye to their own unions’interests—on the way to deter-
mine which groups were to be considered low-paid and thus deserving of extra pay
increases. One concrete proposal on how to allocate the wage increases built on
the wage increase per agreement area since 1939, another on a calculated average
wage per job in 1950. This proposal prompted a lively debate on the relative positions
of saw-mill workers, carpenters, painters, plumbers, and clothing workers (the
women in particular). The decision of the meeting followed the Secretariat’s proposal
for coordinated bargaining, with 5 percent average real wage growth, plus an extra tax
on the profits of the forestry industry. The follow-up came with an extra meeting at
the end of January 1952, when the Secretariat had to report that the employers were
demanding central negotiations. The final, path-breaking central agreement gave
larger pay increases for low-paid workers and for women, a proposal eliciting
much satisfaction. Beyond some criticism from high-wage unions (the Miners,
Construction Workers and Book Binders), the main criticisms were that the increases
for the low-paid and the special pay rises for women did not go far enough.
47
The centralized wage bargaining model, with special considerations for various
groups (“solidaristic wage policy”) had now been established. With some temporary
steps back (for example 1953–1954) this model was practiced until the 1970s. Wage
policy was now a part of macroeconomic policy, and a part of welfare policy. The
1954–1955 discussions began with a presentation by an LO economist on workers’
benefits. This investigation was intended to be part of the “long-term planning of
wage policy,”in which not only wages but also benefits would be considered.
48
The bargaining round of 1955 is a good example of the further developments. It
was marked by both optimism about the economy and the LO’s own capacity, but
also with a certain unhappiness with the fall back into uncoordinated bargaining
in 1953–1954. The LO economist Meidner reported happily that the economy was
between boom and over-heating, and that wages had increased more than productiv-
ity over the last year. But wage growth had been unequal. The LO chairman Strand
argued for a truly centralized, solidaristic wage policy: the LO should strive for a
fair share of increased productivity, and with a solidaristic distribution among the
workers. A cunning politician, Strand would not of course have proffered this argu-
ment had he not known that it had support within the organization. Winroth from
Forestry (Skogs- och flottningsarbetareförbundet) concurred, and emphasized that
greater year-to-year continuity was needed, with an end to the oscillation between
coordinated and “free”bargaining rounds. Furthermore, he argued that the LO
should also coordinate with the Union for Professional Employees (TCO) and the
12 Erik Bengtsson
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farmers so that the latter would not be able to wait for an LO agreement and then
leapfrog it. This is fascinating as it adds another dimension to the coordination prob-
lem: not only competition between sectors within the LO, or with the employers, or
with farmers, but also with white-collar employees. In fact, such coordination,
LO-TCO-SAF, was implemented in this year. A two-year central agreement with
SAF was reached, with a solidaristic distribution of pay increases.
49
In 1956–1957, TCO refused to participate, but the LO-SAF central negotiations
continued. Again, the solidaristic wage policy was formulated especially as real
income growth (öre) for the low-paid and a set percentage for everyone else.
50
In
the 1958–1959 bargaining round, when the previous agreement expired, the LO
and SAF again pursued a two-year agreement. By now, LO power over the member
unions’wage policies, and two-year agreements were by now almost uncontroversial,
taken for granted. Thus, the transformation that I have sought to reconstruct was
over; the classical “Swedish model”of wage bargaining had been established.
Conclusions
The present investigation has shown that the received wisdom on the origins of the
Swedish coordinated wage bargaining model is misleading. Industry wage leadership
did not develop with any cross-class alliance of employers and unions in export indus-
try in the 1930s, as argued by the previous literature.
51
A coordinated wage policy, with
an emphasis on responsibility of the economy as a whole including competitiveness
developed in the 1950s and concerns for the exporting sector was a part of this project,
but not a dominating one. The LO’s wage policy, once it was freed of the parochial
mind set of “everyone get what you can”of the 1930s and 1940s, did turn in a respon-
sible direction. But not in theway suggested by previous research, neither in its shape (it
wasn’t export sector wage leadership, but centralized bargaining) nor in its drivers.
Incentives for responsible wage policies on behalf of trade unions can arise both in
coordinated/wage leadership systems, and in centralized systems.
52
While previous
research on Swedish wage leadership, in line with the “export-sector bias”
53
of com-
parative political economy, has seen cost internalization in the shape of wage leader-
ship from the 1930s on, it arose differently and later—in the 1950s, in the context of
bargaining centralization. It was not about export-sector dominance over home-
market unions such as construction; instead, it was the unions’participation in the
Social Democratic dirigisme of the 1940s and 1950s.
The Swedish coordinated wage bargaining model should be understood as part of
the Social Democratic project of reining in capitalism; responsible trade union wage
policy in these years was from the beginning more “macro-corporatist”than sec-
toral.
54
The reason why the LO started to emphasize responsibility for the economy
as a whole was not that they were bludgeoned into it by employers in engineering.
55
Instead, it grew out of the sense that they were, with the Social Democrats continuously
in government after 1932, were building a Social Democratic society. As the LO’schair-
man Arne Geijeremphasized in the 1960s when he explained that the LO’s wage policy
had to take responsibility for the wider society: “society is more or less ourselves and
our families.”
56
In a situation with almost universal union membership and the dom-
inance of blue-collar work, this statement made sense. The LO in the 1950s or 1960s
International Labor and Working‐Class History 13
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could not pursue a wage policy without regard to the economy’s overall performance;
the “get what you can”wage policy of the 1930s was not possible anymore.
Instead, the new instruments of macroeconomics were put to use to calculate the
possible scope for wage policy, to get as much as possible without harming the econ-
omy. Here, the investigation of this paper ties in with the rather rich literature on the
development of the so-called Rehn-Meidner model of coordinated wage policy and
macroeconomic policy.
57
This model was a Swedish labor movement alternative to
Keynesianism. It entailed a combination of solidaristic and expansive wage policy,
a relatively austere economic policy to counter inflation, and a degree of economic
planning to steer investments and consumption. This was indeed a fascinating policy
model of some originality. However, the Rehn-Meidner literature typically focuses on
the postwar situation and the need to develop a policy mix for an economic situation
of full employment and rapid growth. Here, the purpose has rather been to trace the
development of wage policy in a longer time frame. In this way, the research here is
complementary to the stream of research on the Rehn-Meidner model.
Finally, let us consider the evolution of wages and income distribution. In the post-
war period, the LO’s wage policy gave wage increases even above the high pace of pro-
ductivity growth, which meant that the wage share of the national income grew.
58
Wage policy was redistributive both between different types of workers, as noted in
the literature,
59
and between the classes, redistributing from capital to labor. Wage
policy could redistribute incomes from profits to wages and employee benefits with-
out harming the economy, as consumer demand was boosted by rising wages, and the
economies with which Sweden competed, also boosted their wage shares in the same
period.
60
Swenson’s argument that within-class conflict matters as much as between-
class conflict, or more, is important and brilliantly presented but must not be over-
stated: The construction of the Swedish wage bargaining model was not only about
within-class conflict and cross-class alliances. Neither on the institutional level, nor
on that of the real economy. A peaceful labor market with collaborative relations
between unions and employers did evolve after 1938, but this does not mean that
the underlying conflict between labor and capital vanished, just that it was handled
in a collaborative, positive-sum way.
61
The history-writing on the Swedish model
has in the last decades turned to a perspective of within-class conflict and between-
class collaboration. This is certainly an important aspect of the Swedish labor market,
but not the whole story.
Notes
1. Cf. Gøsta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Princeton, NJ, 1990).
2. Geoff Eley, Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850–2000 (Oxford, 2002), 247.
3. Karl Ove Moene and Michael Wallerstein, “How Social Democracy Worked: Labor-Market
Institutions,”Politics & Society 23 (1995): 185.
4. Moene and Wallerstein, ”How Social Democracy Worked”; Michelle Alexopoulos and Jon Cohen,
“Centralised wage bargaining and structural change in Sweden,”European Review of Economic History 7
(2003).
5. Geoffrey Garrett and Christopher Way, “Public Sector Unions, Corporatism, and Wage Determination,”
in Torben Iversen, Jonas Pontusson, and David Soskice, eds., Unions, Employers and Central Banks
(Cambridge, 2000), 267–92; Franz Traxler and Bernd Brandl, “Collective Bargaining, Macroeconomic
Performance, and the Sectoral Composition of Trade Unions,”Industrial Relations 49 (2010): 91–115.
14 Erik Bengtsson
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6. Peter Swenson, Fair Shares: Unions, Pay and Politics in Sweden and West Germany (London, 1989);
“Bringing Capital Back In, or Social Democracy Reconsidered: Employer Power, Cross-Class Alliances,
and Centralization of Industrial Relations in Denmark and Sweden,”World Politics 43 (1991);
Capitalists against Markets: The Making of Labor Markets and Welfare States in the United States and
Sweden (Oxford, 2002); “Solidaritet mellan klasserna: Storlockouten och Saltsjöbadsandan,”in Nya perspek-
tiv på Saltsjöbadsavtalet ed. Christer Lundh (Stockholm, 2009), 42–90; Klas Fregert, “Saltsjöbadsavtalet –en
centraliserad arbetsmarknad med låg arbetslöshet,”Nya perspektiv på Saltsjöbadsavtalet, ed. Christer Lundh
(Stockholm, 2009), 139–53; Lars Svensson, “Saltsjöbaden och världen: Lönebildningens institutioner i en
liten öppen ekonomi,”Nya perspektiv på Saltsjöbadsavtalet, ed. Christer Lundh (Stockholm, 2009), 120–38.
7. Kathleen Thelen, and James Mahoney, “Comparative-Historical Analysis in Contemporary Political
Science,”in Thelen and Mahoney, eds., Advances in Comparative-Historical Analysis (Cambridge, 2015),
3–36, 14. On the analytical shift see also Donato Di Carlo, “Does Pattern Bargaining Explain Wage
Restraint in the German Public Sector?”MPIfG Discussion Paper 18/3, Max Planck Institute for the
Study of Societies (Cologne, 2018). For the power resources perspective, presented in a polemic with
Swenson, see Walter Korpi, “Power Resources and Employer-Centered Approaches in Explanations of
Welfare States and Varieties of Capitalism: Protagonists, Consenters, and Antagonists,”World Politics 58
(2006): 167–206.
8. Svensson, “Saltsjöbaden och världen,”121.
9. One can of course question the assumed positive connection between wage restraint and investment; cf.
Erik Bengtsson, “Wage Restraint in Scandinavia: During the Postwar Period or the Neoliberal Age?”
European Review of Economic History 19 (2015): 359–81; Erik Bengtsson and Engelbert Stockhammer,
“Wages, income distribution and economic growth in Scandinavia,”Post-Keynesian Economics Society
Working Paper 1811 (2018). There is a remarkable consensus in the literature that wage restraint is
good, and that it was provided by Social Democrats. I will get back to this issue in the conclusions.
10. For the classical macroeconomic model, see Lars Calmfors and John Driffill, “Bargaining structure,
corporatism and macroeconomic performance,”Economic Policy 3 (1988): 13–61. On Sweden, in this per-
spective, see also Mancur Olson, How Bright are the Northern Lights? Some Questions about Sweden (Lund,
1990) and Alexopoulos and Cohen, “Centralized wage bargaining.”
11. The classical macroeconomic presentation of this analysis is David Soskice, “Wage Determination: The
Changing Role of Institutions in Advanced Industrialized Countries,”Oxford Review of Economic Policy 6
(1990): 36–61. For further empirical application, see Garrett and Way, “Public Sector Unions”and Traxler
and Brandl, “Collective Bargaining.”On competing wage claims and a sociological analysis of inflation, see
John H. Goldthorpe, “The current inflation: towards a sociological account,”in Fred Hirsch and John H.
Goldthorpe, eds., The Political Economy of Inflation (London, 1978), 186–214.
12. Another traditional focus in the studies of Swedish wage policy has been on the development of a “sol-
idaristic wage policy”—the equalization of wages between different types of worker—and its implementa-
tion. See Jörgen Ullenhag, Den solidariska lönepolitiken i Sverige: debatt och verklighet (Uppsala, Sweden,
1970); Axel Hadenius, Facklig organisationsutveckling: En studie av Landsorganisationen i Sverige
(Stockholm, 1976); Anders L. Johansson and Lars Magnusson, LO - 1900-talet och ett nytt millennium
(Stockholm, 2012), ch. 2. A related stream of literature focuses more on the macroeconomic dimension
of wage policy, inflation-fighting, and balancing the economy: Lars Calmfors and Erik Lundberg,
Inflation och arbetslöshet (Stockholm, 1974); Klas-Göran Warginger, Wage Formation in the
Scandinavian Model: An Empirical Test on Swedish Data with an Error Correction Model (Stockholm,
1992). At the root, these two streams are related, since solidaristic wage policy has always been made
with one eye on stability concerns—cf. Lennart Erixon, “The Swedish third way: an assessment of the per-
formance and validity of the Rehn–Meidner model,”Cambridge Journal of Economics 32 (2008): 367–93.
13. The LO (Landsorganisationen) was founded in 1898 and the SAF (Svenska Arbetsgivarföreningen) in
1902. For the early history, see James Fulcher, Labour Movements, Employers and the State: Conflict and
Co-Operation in Britain and Sweden (Oxford, 1991), chs. 3 and 4. The LO organizes blue-collar workers;
white-collar workers and professionals have their own trade union confederations since 1944 (TCO) and
1947 (Saco) respectively.
14. Swenson’s overarching analysis of Saltsjöbaden is clearly presented in Capitalists against Markets,114–18;
and in “Solidaritet mellan klasserna,”especially 46–47, 74–77. The citation is from Capitalists against Markets,
114; see also Klas Åmark, ”Diskussion kring del 1,”in Sten Edlund, ed., Saltsjöbadsavtalet 50 år: Forskare och
parter begrundar en epok 1938–1988 (Stockholm, 1988), 111–13.
International Labor and Working‐Class History 15
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15. Svensson, ”Saltsjöbaden och världen”; Fregert, ”Saltsjöbadsavtalet.”See also Nils Elvander,
“Industriavtalet och Saltsjöbadsavtalet –en jämförelse,”Arbetsmarknad & Arbetsliv 8 (2002): 194.
16. On these discussions cf. Swenson, Fair Shares,59–60; also Ullenhag, Den solidariska lönepolitiken,28–41
and Hadenius, Facklig organisationsutveckling,34–52.
17. i.e., Swenson, Capitalists against Markets,74–75; “Solidaritet mellan klasserna,”57–67.
18. Swenson, Capitalists against Markets, 73.
19. For an overview of a typical bargaining round in the 1950s–early 1960s, see T.L. Johnston, Collective
Bargaining in Sweden: A Study of the Labour Market and Its Institutions (London, 1962), 264–67. For
descriptions of the bargaining rounds of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s from a SAF perspective, see Hans
De Geer, SAF i förhandlingar: Svenska Arbetsgivareföreningen och dess förhandlingsrelationer till LO och
tjänstemannaorganisationerna 1930–1970 (Stockholm, 1986), 99–161. They are depicted more cursorily
from an LO perspective in Johansson and Magnusson, LO,35–58. See also Michael Wallerstein and
Miriam Golden “The Fragmentation of the Bargaining Society: Wage Setting in the Nordic Countries,
1950 to 1992,”Comparative Political Studies 30 (1997): 699–731, 706–711, on the postwar period.
20. Arbetarrörelsens arkiv och bibliotek, Huddinge. Archive 2964, Landsorganisationen i Sverige. I will
shorten this as ARBARK. Archive code: 2964/A/2/A, series “Representantskapets protokoll.”
21. Swenson, Fair Shares,“Bringing Capital Back In,”Capitalists against Markets,”Solidaritet mellan klas-
serna”; Åmark, “Diskussion,”and Klas Åmark, Facklig makt och fackligt medlemskap: De svenska
fackförbundens medlemsutveckling 1890–1940 (Lund, Arkiv, 1988), 154–55.
22. See, for example, Fulcher, Labour Movements, ch. 8.
23. Here I can only summarize the wage policy debates briefly. For more detail and a year-by-year account
of the discussions, see the working paper version of the article.
24. On the situation in 1938, see Sofie Rehnström and Robert Sjunneson, “Tillsammans: LO-samordning
och samverkan i praktiken”(Stockholm, 2015), 17, 21. On the ambitions for more solidaristic and elaborate
wage policy see Ingvar Ohlsson, Lönepolitik och solidaritet del 1 (Stockholm, 1990) and on the disappoint-
ment see Hadenius, Facklig organisationsutveckling,32–43. On “get what you can,”see Johansson and
Magnusson, LO, 36.
25. On the 1940s see Ullenhag, Den solidariska lönepolitiken,78–80; and De Geer, SAF i förhandlingar, 45.
The Ullenhag quote is from p. 66.
26. ARBARK 2964/A/2/A, 10–12 June 1941, 41–2.
27. ARBARK 2964/A/2/A, 2–3 November 1949, 93.
28. Note that the Social Democratic government in 1949, led by Tage Erlander, was dependent upon sup-
port from the Farmers’Party in the second chamber. In 1951, the Social Democrats and the Farmers’Party
formed a coalition government. The Farmers’Party was very keen on farming subsidies, which had been at
the core also of the epoch-making 1933 first coalition (the “cow trade”) between the two parties. Erlander
wrote in his diary on August 22, 1949, that the government representatives had got a thorough scolding
from the LO Representation for the new twenty million in subsidies to the farmers. Tage Erlander,
Dagböcker 1945–1949 (Hedemora, 2001), 374. Tensions between the LO and the farmers were a recurrent
theme in Erlander’s diary this autumn: Erlander, Dagböcker, 379, 381–2, 385–6, 393–5, 411. On the impor-
tance of the farmer-SAP coalition for wage policy, see also Korpi, “Power Resources,”188.
29. ARBARK 2964/A/2/A April 1948, 80; October 18, 1948, 22–23.
30. In Swedish: De förenade förbunden, DFF. This was a very broad union, as indicated by its original name
from 1905: Chemical-technic, mill- and leather workers’union. The cross-industry organizing of DFF was
against the principles of the LO from 1926, when it was decided that the LO should organize by industry.
DFF was dissolved in 1962, its members transferred to other LO unions.
31. ARBARK 2964/A/2/A, August 18–19, 1949, 39.
32. ARBARK 2964/A/2/A, August 1947, 17. The change of LO statutes that Karlén alludes to 1941 is that at
the 1941 congress the committee on organization reform appointed by the 1936 congress presented its
report, which proposed a centralization of decision making, not least over strikes. Cf. Ullenhag, Den solid-
ariska lönepolitiken,47–53; Hadenius, Facklig organisationsutveckling,45–68; Swenson, Fair Shares,51–53.
33. ARBARK 2964/A/2/A, September 3, 1942, 12.
34. ARBARK 2964/A/2/A, April 26–27, 1948, 13
35. ARBARK 2964/A/2/A, April 26–27, 1948, 39.
36. The evolving LO research bureau should be seen in a context of modernist optimism regarding indus-
trial growth and economic planning, and related to the centralization of the LO after 1941. Ekdahl, in his
16 Erik Bengtsson
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0147547922000047 Published online by Cambridge University Press
biography of the LO economist Rudolf Meidner, provides a fascinating discussion of this development: Lars
Ekdahl, Mot en tredje väg: En biografi över Rudolf Meidner. I: Tysk flykting och svensk modell (Lund, 2002),
115–88, 258–321. Cf. Erixon, “The Swedish Third Way.”
37. ARBARK 2964/A/2/A, April 27–28, 1949, 10–11.
38. ARBARK 2964/A/2/A, August 18–19, 1949, 47–48.
39. ARBARK 2964/A/2/A, August 18–19, 1949, 86–87; September 22, 1949, 29–31.
40. ARBARK 2964/A/2/A, September 22, 1949, 51. On Rehn and Meidner’s road from controversial young
iconoclasts to designers of official LO policy, see Åmark, Facklig makt, 69–70. See also Rehn’s statement at
the September 22, 1949, meeting, 55–56. Peter Katzenstein, Small States in World Markets: Industrial Policy
in Europe (Ithaca, NY, 1985), 88, has highlighted the role of experts in social corporatism; the late 1940s–
early 1950s mark the breakthrough for economic expertise in Swedish wage bargaining.
41. The presentation of the report is in ARBARK 2964/A/2/A, November 2–3, 1949, 15; the discussion
follows from there. The quote is from p. 35.
42. ARBARK 2964/A/2/A, November 2–3, 1949, 68, 51–52.
43. ARBARK 2964/A/2/A, November 2–3, 1949, 49. The debate on the issue of a differentiated wage round
versus prolongation was lively. In 1949, the argument for prolongation won, with reference to the precar-
ious economic situation (e.g., Geijer, November 2–3, 1949, 79), but it seemed clear that coordination and
differentiation would replace it in the future.
44. ARBARK 2964/A/2/A, April 26–27, 1950, 64–69.
45. ARBARK 2964/A/2/A, August 24, 1950, 38; April 26, 1951, 25.
46. ARBARK 2964/A/2/A, August 23, 1951, 23–24 (Lantz), 19–20 (Strand); November 8–9, 1951, 17
(Rehn), 30 (decision).
47. For the discussion, see November 8–9, 1951, 56. On how path-breaking the central agreement was, see,
for example, Fulcher, Labour Movements, 190–91.
48. ARBARK 2964/A/2/A, September 22, 1954, 7.
49. ARBARK 2964/A/2/A, April 21, 1955, 12–16 (Meidner), 24 (Strand); September 14, 1955, 44
(Winroth); 7 February, 1956, 7 (decision).
50. ARBARK 2964/A/2/A, November 16, 1956, 4–6; February 23, 1957, 8.
51. Åmark, Facklig makt; Swenson, Capitalists against markets,“Solidaritet mellan klasserna”; Svensson,
“Saltsjöbaden och världen”; Fregert, “Saltsjöbaden.”
52. Coordinated systems: cf. Soskice, “Wage Determination”; Traxler and Brandl, “Collective Bargaining.”
Centralized systems: Calmfors and Driffill, “Bargaining Structure.”
53. A phrase from Di Carlo, “Does Pattern Bargaining.”
54. Cf. Cathie Jo Martin and Duane Swank, “Gonna Party Like It’s 1899: Party Systems and the Origins of
Varieties of Coordination,”World Politics 63 (2012): 78–114; Olson, How Bright.
55. As in Swenson, Capitalists against Markets, 73.
56. Quoted in Hadenius, Facklig organisationsutveckling, 112.
57. Ekdahl, Mot en tredje väg; Erixon, “The Swedish third way”; Lennart Erixon, “A social innovation or a
product of its time? The Rehn–Meidner model’s relation to contemporary economics and the Stockholm
school,”European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 18 (2011): 85–123.
58. Erik Bengtsson, “Labour’s Share in Twentieth-century Sweden: A Reinterpretation,”Scandinavian
Economic History Review 62 (2014): 290–314; Bengtsson, “Wage Restraint.”
59. For example, Moene and Wallerstein, “How Social Democracy Worked”; Alexopoulos and Cohen,
“Centralized wage bargaining”; Swenson, Fair Shares, chs. 4 and 5; Johansson and Magnusson, LO, ch. 2.
60. Bengtsson, “Wage Restraint”; Bengtsson and Stockhammer, “Wages, income distribution and eco-
nomic growth.”
61. Cf. the “radical”view of the employee—employer relationship in Colin Crouch, TradeUnions:TheLogicof
Collective Action (London, 1982). This view states that there is a fundamental conflict between employers and
employees, but that the it is a positive-sum conflict and can be handled in a collaborative way. See also Korpi,
“Power Resources,”for a powerful statement in favor of a class perspective on the Swedish model.
Cite this article: Bengtsson E (2022). The Origins of the Swedish Wage Bargaining Model. International
Labor and Working-Class History 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0147547922000047
International Labor and Working‐Class History 17
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0147547922000047 Published online by Cambridge University Press
