New Forms of Worker Organization by Immanuel Ness

Author:Immanuel Ness
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PM Press
Published: 2014-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

III.

ORGANIZING AUTONOMY AND RADICAL UNIONISM IN THE GLOBAL NORTH

CHAPTER 9

Syndicalism in Sweden: A Hundred Years of the SAC

Gabriel Kuhn

Origins and Overview

In 1898, Landsorganisationen (LO), Sweden’s biggest trade union confederation, was founded by members of the Social Democratic Party. The relations between LO and the Swedish Social Democrats remain very strong to this day.

In 1909, LO entered its first major confrontation with Svenska Arbetsgivareforeningen (Swedish Employers’ Association, SAF). The reasons were lockouts and salary cuts, which the employers attempted to justify as necessary means during a time of economic recession. From August 4 to November 13, 1909, the so-called Storstrejken (Great Strike) effectively put a halt to industrial production and service industries in the country.1

When the Great Strike ended, none of LO’s demands were met and thousands of workers had lost their jobs. Many among LO’s rank and file accused the leadership of organizing the strike half-heartedly and not putting enough pressure on the employers. LO lost almost half of its membership. It was in this historical context that Sveriges Arbetares Centralorganisation (the Central Organization of Sweden’s Workers, SAC) was founded in 1910 as a radical union alternative.

The SAC’s founding congress took place in Stockholm in June 1910. A photograph from the event shows thirty-six men and one woman assembled. Apart from delegates sent by various unions, the participants included members of the socialist press and representatives of Ungsocialisterna (the Young Socialists), a radical wing with anarchist tendencies that had left the Social Democratic Party in 1908. The Young Socialists and the SAC were closely connected and laid the foundation for organized anarchism and syndicalism in Sweden.

The SAC was founded as a syndicalist organization. Guiding examples were the French Confederation Genérale du Travail (CGT) and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), founded in the United States in 1905. The main organizational unit of the SAC is the Lokal Samorganisation (LS), roughly a “local federation.” A single LS unites all workers in a municipality and is comparable to the traditional bourse du travail: an independently organized group of workers determining their own workplace struggles and means. Many LSs—some of which had already formed before the official foundation of the SAC—had a radical outlook and favored direct action over negotiation. At the end of 1910, the SAC counted twenty-one of them.

The SAC’s name is somewhat misleading. Far from being a centralized organization, the SAC mainly functions as an administrative umbrella for the LSs, which maintain a very high level of autonomy. Federalism has always been a key principle of the organization.2 While the SAC’s founding documents include explicit commitments to “socialist principles” and the “fight against capitalism,” and while many individual SAC members throughout history identified as “libertarian socialists” or “anarchists,” the organization itself never adhered to any particular political worldview and has always been open to all workers, regardless of political conviction or affiliation.

History

Most of the SAC’s early members came from the stonemasonry, forestry, mining, and construction industries. In 1911 a LS formed in Kiruna, a small mining town far north of the Arctic Circle, representing the single biggest LS in the country.

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