Louise Nousratpour
Thursday November 16, 2006
The Morning Star Foreign News
THOUSANDS of campaigners demonstrated throughout Sweden on Wednesday night to express their opposition to the newly elected Moderate Party's plans to cut unemployment benefits.
Organised by anarcho-syndicalist trade union federation Sveriges Arbetares Centralorganisation, activists clogged the streets of Stockholm, Gothenburg and 21 other cities chanting anti-government slogans and demanding: "Hands off our unemployment benefits."
Rather than relying on taxpayers' money, Sweden's unemployment insurance scheme is a self-financing system in which 4.45 per cent of wages are automatically diverted into the unemployment benefit kitty.
Campaigners warned that the right-wing Moderate Party's plans would cut benefits for the unemployed by 15 per cent, while raising employee contributions.
"We demand the complete withdrawal of these ill-thought-out proposals," said SAC campaign co-ordinator Torfi Magnusson.
The neoliberal government's proposals are contained in a new unemployment Bill that was presented to the Swedish parliament on Thursday.
