c o n t i n u i t y a n d c o n t r ac t 189 great outcry, since the authors had published it without the government’s knowing about it.390 Olin and Åkerman startled the government by presenting recommendations which, at this point in Swedish labour law history, n. b, could be accused of being a left-wing programme.The authors asserted that since the matter of arbitration had been temporarily solved by legislation in 1906, now the most important task was to regulate the labour service agreement itself and to bring about protection against breaches of such contracts. Clearly deviating from a bill that the left-wing parties in parliament had rejected in 1905, Olin and Åkerman emphasised that the individual contract could no longer alone provide the basis of new legislation.This, on the contrary, should foremost be based upon the collective agreement.There was a need for an explicit legislative rule which prescribed that an individual contract between parties belonging to organisations bound by collective agreements should give way to the terms of the collective agreement. Regarding breaches of contracts the authors rejected all previous ideas about sanctions, such as the withdrawal of poor relief, the introduction of workbooks, the withholding of salary (decompté) as well as criminal law sanctions. Olin and Åkerman even discussed the possibility of abolishing the “Åkarp Act” from1899 and of establishing a kind of workers’ councils, which would have the right to express their opinions on the employer’s plant regulations. According to Olin and Åkerman, the best guarantee for establishing peace on the labour market was to rely on the patterns that had been established in people’s ways of living, or, as the authors expressed the matter, to allow the collective agreements to develop “naturally”.391 Olin and Åkerman’s ideas were received approvingly by Liberals and Social Democrats while some-right wing newspapers 390 Åkerman & Olin (1907) 1910;Westerståhl 1945, p. 300. Olin later wrote an account of the foreign legislation in the area. Olin 1908. 391 Åkerman & Olin (1907) 1910, pp. 60, 64.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=