In the debate, Pettersson gave another hint about the evaluation of customs by declaring that in case the workers disliked the employers’ section 23 prerogatives, they ought to see to it that they should be removed from the collective agreements.This was a reply to the large number of Social Democrats, for example Per Albin Hansson, Gustav Möller and Rickard Sandler, who had rejected the bill on the grounds that section 23, though established in fact, was not accepted among the workers. Even if the leading profiles of the labour movement in principle may have accepted legal regulation of the collective agreement and a labour court in the legislative process of 1927-28, their official line was negative.The Social Democrats were in a pressed political situation, caused partly by missing the Liberals’ support, partly by the emergence of a Communist Party.Thus, the Social Democrats faced a considerable strategic problem, namely, to distinguish their territory from the communists wihout losing votes by pleading for a policy which could be understood as expressing right-wing sympathies. The changed situation in parliament is an important background factor in the Social Democrats closing ranks when facing the parliamentary debates during the spring of 1928and, not forgetting, the elections to the second chamber in the fall just a few months later. Its leading representatives, for example,Wigforss, Sandler, Per Albin Hansson, Gustav Möller, Sigfrid Hansson andVärner Rydén, at that time expressed a strong and united resistance to the proposed labour law legislation. They claimed that political democracy had not entailed the desired economic democracy. However, in a striking contrast to the discussion of 1910-1911, the Social Democrats now admitted that section 23 in fact had been inscribed in a great number of collective agreements. But in the same breath they pointed out that this term of contract was not accepted by the trade unions but was the result of the employers’ abuse of a superior bargaining position by threatening lock-out.Consequently section23ought to be removed from p a r t i v, c h a p t e r 1 0 308
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