Skogens skördemän : Skogs- och flottningsarbetareförbundets kamp för arbete och kollektivavtal 1918-1927

Sammanfattning: For the Swedish forest workers, both unionization and the breakthrough of collective agreements were late in coming. As a result, the sub-contracting system continued into the 1940’s. The present study attempts to explain this, and to determine why the reformist policy of the Swedish Union of Forest Workers and River Drivers failed. Two theoretical approaches have been applied to these problems: The actions of the Union and their opponents - the big forest companies and the river drive associations - have been analyzed from the perspective of power resourses, and forestry in terms of its place in the development of capitalism. The answer to the problem is threefold. In general, the power of the Union was weak, as a consequence of the tough competition for employment opportunities, the social differences among the workers, and employers who refused to negotiate with the unions. Some of the local unions tried to develop an alternative policy which I term localism, a policy which they thought better served their needs for creating working opportunities. Similarly, the strenght of the employers was great, as a result of their right to decide where cutting operations should take place and which workers should be employed. Forestry was in and of itself different in many ways from other sectors of the Swedish economy: in some ways pre-capitalistic and yet embedded in the very heart of the organized capitalism of Sweden. Conditions within forestry made it possible for the saw mill and pulp industry owners to choose other strategies for work management and for dealing with the labourers. The thesis stresses the importance of not limiting an analysis of the labour market to just that single market, but investigating all markets the employer and the workers interact with. The different path taken by the forest labor market is even today obvious, with the hard mechanization of the working process and the massive return of the sub-contracting system. The thesis is written in Swedish with an English summary.