c o n t i n u i t y a n d c o n t r ac t 193 rejected. In the conflict that followed, the employer hired strikebreakers from England, who were housed on the ship Amalthea in the harbour of Malmö.Three young Swedish workers placed a bomb in the cargo hatch, which lead to one man being killed and seven injured.At the end of the conflict the employers had forced through their demands concerning the right of direction.396 During the years 1909-1911, several further steps were taken in the process towards the legal system’s recognition and integration of collective agreements.This happened in the shadow of a brutal reality on the Swedish labour market. In the summer of 1909 a nationwide general strike (Sw.“storstrejken”) broke out.The strike, which included around 300,000 workers, lasted about four weeks and ended in a complete defeat for the strikers. Striking workers belonged to unions which had entailed into collective agreements containing prohibitions against strikes. Consequently the conflict brought to the fore what legal position the trade unions had, and the question of how to link this issue to legislation concerning the industrial peace obligation of collective agreements.The public debate paid great attention to labour law legislation, which influenced the political parties’ campaigns before the elections to the second chamber in the fall of 1909. The general strike in 1909 arose from disputes concerning a recession in regulating wages in national agreements for the paper pulp and the clothing industries.The employers were eager to level out wages and to achieve nationwide agreements, and thus creating an unbroken frontline in face of the workers’ demands. SAF’s approach in 1909 was an expression of its general wish to establish overall agreements that could function as “legislation” regarding the entire industry branch.The national unions rejected an ultimatum by SAF in 1909 and asserted that a settlement 8. 3 leg i slat ive of fens ive and “the nature of things” . 1909-11 396 Casparsson 1947, pp. 289 ff.; Modéer 1978 (1984); Nycander 2002, p. 26.
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