nation-wide agreement for the metal industry in 1905 and the “December compromise” in1906, all illustrate the employers and the state at an early stage taking the attitude of toleration towards the union movement and collective solutions on the labour market.Their gradual switch towards recognition was reflected in the law on arbitration from 1906, the discussion of the Olin- Åkerman memorandum of 1907 and the unpublished drafts of the labour law committee in 1908 and 1909. The bill of 1910 showed that the state not only tolerated and recognised the existing trade union movement but even tried to integrate it into its own legal system.The bill of 1911, again, in principle meant that the time had past when there was any scope for prescribing criminal law sanctions for maintaining peace on the labour market.This period of integration was further emphasised by the Supreme Court’s conclusion in 1915 that collective agreements where legally binding.A draft in 1916 by the Social Board of Welfare distinguished the very opposition to the bill only15years earlier (1901) by totally ignoring the individual contract and paying all attention to the collective agreements.The Central Board for Arbitration that was established in 1920 was transferred into a system of mandatory arbitration within less than a decade. Influenced by the legal changes in Denmark, Norway and Germany, legislation was passed in1928 that maintained the binding force of collective agreements and established a corporatist arbitration board called the labour court, in which trade unions and employers’ organisations were given representation. Statements by legal scholars, among them Birger Ekeberg, illustrated how the tables had turned within a few decades; those who previously were against the collective agreement now strongly supported that it was maintained as a means of preventing industrial actions on the labour market. The state gradually changed its attitude towards interfering with the relationship between the parties to labour contracts. From the early 1890s to the late 1920s it took the road fromlaissez c o n t i n u i t y a n d c o n t r ac t 319
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