Word: laborer
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Layoff Bonuses. Governments usually stay clear of the negotiations, except to appoint a mediator occasionally, when the bargaining is especially tough. The government contributes to labor peace through selective intervention to aid the unemployed. Sweden's National Labor Market Board has a highly honed intelligence system to warn of impending layoffs in plants. Often, the board establishes an employment office on the spot to arrange to retrain workers and find them new jobs. It pays the travel cost of interviews for job seekers, as well as moving expenses and family allowances, plus a $130 bonus for each worker, just...
ATTITUDE: Each side takes care not to surprise the other. A labor-management committee meets three times yearly to discuss the next moves. It helps, too, that, as Clas-Erik Odhner, a top official of Sweden's LO, puts it, "everyone knows everyone else. We are all friends...
ORGANIZATION: Scandinavian unions are organized in large groupings that minimize jurisdictional squabbles. Unions do not try to raid each other for members or to leapfrog each other's gains. Secure in their jobs, labor leaders are free from rank-and-file pressure to win ever higher wage settlements...
ENFORCEMENT: Contracts are legally binding, and LO officials deal harshly with any wildcat strike, threatening to expel an offending local from the national union. They are backed by labor courts, which have the power to fine individual strikers. When 1,000 longshore men walked out at Gothenburg last month in Sweden's first sizable wildcat strike in 20 years, they prudently announced in advance that their protest against piecework wages would last only one week...
What can the U.S. learn from the Scandinavians? Among other things, there could be more regular contact between labor and management negotiators, prior agreement to negotiate any point of conflict and earlier involvement of national unions in local disputes. Beyond that, the price for labor peace in the U.S. would require that both labor and management relinquish part of their cherished economic sovereignty. So far, the U.S. has not even begun to debate that question...