Håkan Göransson have emphasised, both these sides of the collective agreements’ juridification were problematic and meant an implicit conflict of interest.The regulation of individual contracts was regarded primarily in the interests of the workers, while the collective agreements’ function as an instrument ensuring peace on the labour market reflected the employers’ demand.606 The lawmaking that followed the acts of 1928 also elucidates Bruun’s and Göransson’s theses about how a juridification of labour issues could fulfil several functions. Obviously the case law made clear a complex political issue, by confirming and at the same time limiting the scope of the employee’s duty of obedience and subordination. Moreover, by giving the big organisations representation in the labour court, the Swedish state in principle had followed a common European path of dealing with trade unions, a path which was marked by repression, toleration, recognition and finally integration. Integration reflected labour law’s historical compromise between laissez-faire capitalism and socialism, which let the big labour market organisations influence the making of labour law at the same time as the most important lawmaker got a stronger legitimacy, which was aimed at decreasing the use of the industrial actions.607 However the crucial element in the making of labour law was power.The role to tip the balance in the court was given to two professional judges and one civil servant. In 1910 a left-wing majority of the Parliament rejected making section 23 an explicit and mandatory term of each collective agreement.Two decades later it was implied in every collective agreement by the labour court’s case law. At the end of the day, the integration of the trade unions in combination with the juridification of labour conflicts opened the back door for the professionally trained judge and thus for the learned lawyer, educated at a Law faculty. This profession, which so far had played a rather unobtrusive p a r t v, c h a p t e r 11 340 606 Bruun 1987; Göransson 1988, pp. 401-412, 424. 607 Göransson 1988, pp. 405-409.
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