Standing up for justice

LOUISE NOUSRATPOUR finds that a workers' protest is mounting in Sweden.

Monday May 5, 2008
The Morning Star

SWEDISH workers have been hit by wave after wave of attacks on their unions and living standards since the right-wing Moderate Party defeated the Social Democrats in September 2006 elections.

The public has responded with mass demonstrations and workers in the construction, transport and health sectors have taken strike action, the most recent being the current mass walkout by thousands of angry nurses and health professionals over below-inflation pay deals.

And the mood for action is brewing in teaching union branches across the country.

Within months of taking office, the neoliberal government began selling off state assets and, despite mass protests, it cut unemployment benefits by 15 per cent, while, at the same time, increasing employee contributions threefold.

The move was designed to weaken Sweden's strong labour movement as more and more workers, in particular from the low-paid sector, have been forced to choose between paying union membership subs or unemployment benefits contributions.

According to the Swedish Trade Union Confederation, or Landsorganisationen (LO), tens of thousands of workers have left their unions since the law was enforced in January 2007 and more than 22,000 members were lost this year alone.

The LO is extremely worried and has made remedying the problem its top priority.

The Swedish health union Vaardfoerbundet, however, seems to have found a cure. Since it called the strike action on Monday April 21, the union has gained an average of 200 new members a day.

The ongoing action has been steadily growing and, today, 3,500 more health workers will join the 4,500 striking nurses, midwives, biomedical scientists and radiographers fed up with being undervalued, low-paid and overworked.

Another 2,700 members have a mandate to take action from May 16 if the pay dispute is not resolved by then.

The strikers want local government employers to raise their three-year pay offer by 2.5 per cent to 15 per cent. And they are calling for the basic monthly rate to be raised by roughly £400 to £1,843, arguing that three years of university education must be rewarded.

The government has received threats of mass resignation by more than 10,000 health workers who delivered a petition to Parliament last month demanding more pay.

The so-called Wage Uprising is independent of the Vaardfoerbundet, but some union members are involved in the campaign, which fully supports the strike, and has put forward a separate, more radical pay demand.

The campaign's online manifesto reads: "We are no Florence Nightingales - we are no angels responding to a divine calling. We provide a vital social service and our pay must reflect that.

"We are sick of being mistreated and undervalued. We will resign if our demands are not taken seriously."

Vaardfoerbundet warns that the health service will struggle to recruit if it continues to pay its staff low wages as many nurses and other health professionals are increasingly looking to Norway for work, where wages are higher.

Recent opinion polls show that public support for the strikers is solid, with anecdotal stories about patients cheering picketers on as they were being turned away from closed hospitals affected by the action.