Some Notes on Workplace Equality Renewal in the Swedish Labour Market

In 2001, Swedish authorities imposed a new obligation upon all firms with ten or more employees to undertake annual wage surveys, ‘workplace equality audits’ in which it is possible to ascertain, remedy and prevent unwarranted wage differentials and other unfair employment terms between men and women. An important implication of the new system, called ‘workplace equality renewal’ (självsanering), is that, at the level of the firm all Swedish employers must explain what they mean by work of ‘equal value’ as opposed to ‘different value’. This article discusses the practical pros and cons of the new system, and considers how the surveys can be used in research into the present state of gendered work division. A main finding is that the introduction of this new legislation in the long run might change the Swedish industrial relations system as well as the preconditions for many companies’ human resource management policies. Yet, neither the governmental agencies involved nor the parties’ confederate organizations have been able to clarify what the issue is really about to the single, small business employer or to the local trade union branches. Many employers find any interference, whatever it may be, threatening and trade unions have not realized the potentialities of the system from an employee perspective, potentialities connected to the fact that companies are now more or less forced to make transparent their wage policies at large.     

Lost in translation – A case study of a public debate on freedom of expression and a neo-Nazi rally

ABSTRACT

This is a case study of a neo-Nazi public gathering in Sweden and the debate the event caused in Swedish media. The debate focused on the fact that the police gave the neo-Nazis permission to demonstrate and on how this could have been avoided. The study thus concerns the dilemma that emerges when freedom of speech clashes with hate speech and the sense of jeopardized public safety that occurs when neo-Nazis are allowed to march. The study is based on Critical Discourse Analysis and strives to discover how this debate is embedded in more complex ideological contexts. The study helps shed light on how the growing neo-Nazi movement contributes to normalizing general racism. Under the banner of engaging in the fight against racism, public opinionmakers, cited in the articles under study, were willing to suspend freedom of speech for neo-Nazis and accused the police of being too hesitant. At the same time, as shown in the study, the police had other internal priorities that were never exposed. Internally, the police authority debated whether or not the neo-Nazi movement should be given some lenience, based on the assumption that severe handling of the neo-Nazis would cause them to radicalize into violence.     

Organizational changes at a postal sorting terminal—their effects upon work satisfaction, psychosomatic complaints and sick leave

This paper describes a longitudinal study evaluating organizational changes at a postal sorting terminal in Sweden. One hundred postal workers were followed up for 1 year after the changes were put in place. Information about psychosocial factors, sleep disturbances and gastrointestinal complaints were collected by questionnaires administered at the onset of the changes and at 8 and 12 months later. Sick leave during the 1-year follow up was compared with that during the year before the changes were introduced. A significant increase in skill discretion and in authority over decisions occurred during the study period. The reported increase in skill discretion and authority over decisions correlated with a reduction in difficulties with sleep and with gastrointestinal complaints. Changes in reported contact with team mates and superiors also correlated with changes in the reporting of sleep difficulties and gastrointestinal complaints. There was a significant reduction in sick leave. The results indicate that the organizational changes improved the quality of work and at the same time reduced sick leave and psychosomatic complaints.     

Slavery,emancipation and the creole world view of Jamaican colonists, 1800–1834

Focussing on the early nineteenth century, this article examines the ways in which white slaveholders in Jamaica developed a distinctive local ideology based on the institution of slavery. Whites were in a minority in Jamaican slave society, slaveholding was widespread amongst white settlers, and all white men experienced privileges in a society organised around racialised boundaries of rule. These factors helped to ensure that Jamaican colonists developed a distinctively local, or creole, world view characterised by the defence of slavery and a culture of white male solidarity. However, local slaveholders maintained close links with Britain and were militarily dependent on the metropole. Metropolitan culture influenced their ideology, and Jamaican slaveholders saw themselves as loyal subjects of the British Crown. They were therefore colonial creoles and, in spite of the rise of abolitionism in the metropole, they maintained that their local practices were reconcilable with their status as transplanted Britons. By the 1830s changed circumstances in Britain and Jamaica forced slaveholders to reach a compromise with the British Government and to accept the abolition of slavery, but in spite of the important changes that this entailed, the main features of their creole world view persisted.     

Self‐Selection and Economic Assimilation of Immigrants: The Case of Iranian Immigrants Arriving to Three Countries During 1979–1985

The study is designed to evaluate the impact of the interaction between patterns of immigrants' self‐selection and the context of reception at destinations on economic assimilation of Iranian immigrants who came to three countries during 1979–1985. For that purpose, we studied immigrants at the age of 22 or higher upon arrival by utilizing the 5 percent 1990 and 2000 Public Use Microdata files (PUMS) of the United States census, the 20 percent demographic samples of the 1983 and 1995 Israeli censuses of population, and the 1990 and 2000 Swedish registers. The results indicate that the “most qualified” immigrants – both on observed and unobserved variables – who left Iran right after the Islamic revolution, arrived in the US Their positive self‐selection led them to reach complete earnings assimilation with natives there. Iranian immigrants who arrived in Israel and Sweden did not achieve full earnings assimilation with natives. Of these two groups, a smaller immigrant‐to‐native gap in average earnings was found in Sweden, but in the same time Iranian immigrants in Israel were more positively self‐selected and showed better assimilation than their counterparts in Sweden. Market structure played a certain role in immigrants' earnings assimilation mainly in Sweden.