Many of them held that the proposal did not reflect the positions that had been established in reality on the Swedish labour market.They therefore wanted to eliminate the regulations on the right of association and the employer’s right to “freely direct and distribute work”.The proposal was considered to go further than that which occurred in practice, where the parties instead just opened the possibility to restrict the power of the employer.424 Social Democrat Nils Persson from Malmö stated that the proposal for the right of the employer to regulate work entailed new and far from recognised rights that the act presumed at the expense of the workers.425 Ernst Blomberg and others argued that immediately after the general strike of 1909, SAF had tried to get the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) to accept a negotiation procedure that, among other things, referred to a number of principle enactments. Among these was the familiar section23 that dealt with the question about the employer’s right to direct and distribute work, to freely engage and fire workers and to prohibit supervisors from organising a union.That which SAF had not succeeded in achieving with the mass lockout, the government was now trying to force through by legislation.426 Another reason for the protests of the Social Democrats was that the proposal certainly reflected an established practice, but that this custom could not be accepted by the workers. In the extensive resolution made by Branting, Lindqvist, Carl Lindhagen and others in the second chamber, it stated that section 23 of SAF’s charter about the right of the employer to direct and distribute work had been stipulated without any restrictions or regulatives whatsoever. Even if one could accept that the employer’s right seemed to be “rather given and natural”, it’s consequences in reality have proven to be such that the workers had to reserve the right to some kind of co-determination, at least in some areas. p a r t i v, c h a p t e r 8 208 424 SU2 1910:6, pp. 15-16, 42. 425 AK1910:58, pp. 27-28. 426 AK1910:58, pp. 38-40. See also AK1910:58, pp. 14-16 (Herman Lindqvist).
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=