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LearningTranscript
00:00:15so hello everybody here is michael from new left and today we will be talking about unionization
00:00:22and unions in sweden with very good guests who can clarify this martin please can you introduce
00:00:29yourself i can indeed my name is martin jefflin martin jefflin i guess it would be in anglophone
00:00:36uh i am residing in sweden swedish trade unionist currently working with and have been for many
00:00:43years uh with union which is the largest trade union in sweden with a bit over 730 000 members
00:00:50we're organizing white color workers in all private sectors apart from bank and insurance
00:00:58uh i had uh also a career in brussels as a president of euro cadres council of european professional
00:01:07managerial staff between 2013 and 2021 i'm now currently mostly working with the uni global
00:01:17union the federation for the services sectors that's one of my main jobs but i also do some
00:01:23development cooperation work with ukraine and among others okay thank you thank you so cool so as
00:01:31experts go on swedish union you are one of the best i imagine so let's have a discussion about what's
00:01:38going on in sweden because i was looking at the data and as nordic countries go somehow you you manage
00:01:46to okay you dropped as well roughly 15 16 points compared with the height in the 90s but still you
00:01:54manage to withhold and withstand the neoliberal push compared with let's say finland because fin
00:02:01uh fins but did they drop roughly 30 percentage point three zero so like more twice as much as you
00:02:08did so
00:02:08obviously you do something better i guess looks like you do compared with the fins so uh if you know
00:02:18what it might be then that would be interesting also for the fins and and definitely for us slow
00:02:25wax because we are at 8.8 so you're 60 something percentage point that looks like fairyland for us
00:02:35uh well um my husband is actually finished so i i i have a quick quite good understanding of what's
00:02:43going on in finland and even better and we have plenty of cooperation also with with finland from our
00:02:49trade union side so uh we've been following uh with great interest what has been going on there and
00:02:56basically the attacks that the the government has made on on workers and the trade unions
00:03:02um and i think that one of the experiences that they are going through right now is also what
00:03:08happened in sweden in in uh like two 2006 around there when we had a right-wing government um who
00:03:17attacked our unemployment benefits fund and also the right to deduct trade union membership fee
00:03:26which is what is what is going on in finland now as well um right now we've had uh attacks
00:03:35on
00:03:35development cooperation aid uh through civil society uh in sweden uh which meant that we had
00:03:42quite large cuts also for trade unions working with uh with trade unions in in development countries but
00:03:50also a lot of um a lot of um a lot of work now starting with ukraine um and this
00:03:57exactly is what
00:03:58finland is now going through i think they had a 40 cut uh from uh from the budget uh with
00:04:06a finnish
00:04:06trade union uh solitary support organization uh called uh
00:04:15sask sask sask is the name there yeah and so when you compare the model that you are running in
00:04:21sweden compared with uh finland where are the differences where you think that this might be the
00:04:27reason that we are not falling as quickly as the fins do well also if you look at the numbers
00:04:34that we
00:04:34have in sweden what is a bit unique um and i'm not sure that it's 100 unique anymore because we're
00:04:43seeing this trend also a bit elsewhere as i understand that is that we have a significantly
00:04:50higher trade union density when it comes to white color workers and that has not been a historical fact
00:04:57but we have always been quite good at organizing uh amongst white color workers and civil
00:05:04servants also why um yeah because they are the toughest crowd so you you have something special in
00:05:13your sauce well i believe that one of the reasons now uh is also what we what i talked about
00:05:21earlier
00:05:21the attacks that was on the unemployment benefits um we have seen rather drastic cuts which has made it
00:05:29um not as useful for our members just the unemployment benefit insurance because the amounts that you're
00:05:40getting there are so low so that you need to top that off uh and that has also meant an
00:05:46opportunity for
00:05:47us to build on our insurances so a very good organizing um
00:05:55reason for us is is that we have uh the unemployment benefit insurance add-on uh inside our membership fee
00:06:05so
00:06:05if you are a trade union member you will get significantly more uh if you become unemployed
00:06:11than if you're not a trade union member so that is by the way something very unique about scandinavia
00:06:17that the uninsurance as far as i know all four or five countries in scandinavia around the
00:06:22insurance if you are unemployed together with the unionization because not everyone in europe knows
00:06:30it that that this is one of the explanation when the why the penetration is so high because well you
00:06:36know who wants to not be insured so again system yeah no it's like it's rational to do it so
00:06:43this is
00:06:44something that was uh in the from the beginning as a as a kind of strategy run in scandinavian
00:06:50countries or is it something that you learn you know as it as it as it as it went or
00:06:56when did this
00:06:57model emerge you don't have to constant date it was only september i don't care but roughly like
00:07:04after second world war or whatever when it happened no i i i i sorry i have to say that
00:07:11i i don't know my
00:07:12history well enough there to to give you a good understanding of how the processes was to to lead
00:07:19up to the unemployment benefit uh and was it something that was run for decades is it like
00:07:25long history or this is yes it's a long history but it's also something which has been changing quite
00:07:32a bit uh i mean some some decades ago only um or maybe more than well like four or three
00:07:42or four
00:07:42decades ago we were not young we were we were nothing back then exactly but in my youth yeah sometime
00:07:50then we had this situation where the trade union and the unemployment benefit society which has the
00:07:58which has the insurance they were very intricately linked i mean they were basically the same um now
00:08:05the um with the state to try to uh make these ties uh less strong uh so for for us
00:08:19i mean we we have
00:08:21our own unemployment benefit insurance and benefit society it's called union as well as uh as the
00:08:29as the trade union union and akastan which is the name in swedish or unemployment benefits insurance
00:08:36um but uh it has no real organizational links it has the same people to some extent uh in boards
00:08:48but we are not allowed even to have these um links anymore
00:08:56uh and in the twin in the in this change that we had in around 2006 one of the ideas
00:09:04of uh of the
00:09:06government then was to make the insurance the unemployment insurance more like an insurance so they
00:09:14wanted to increase um the risk premium that the money that you have to pay i mean if you are
00:09:21if
00:09:22you're driving a very fast car uh like i don't know ferrari or something um then you're likely to get
00:09:31a
00:09:31more expensive insurance because you are it's it's more likely the probability goes up yes exactly this is
00:09:39what they wanted to do with the the trade unions and their unemployment benefit societies as well so
00:09:44they wanted to look at specific sectors and see okay this is a sector where the unemployment is quite
00:09:49high that means that it will be more expensive to be uh insured there uh and of course this this
00:09:58uh
00:09:58hit quite those sectors where they they raise the premium quite a bit that's where you had the you
00:10:06could see also what you are saying this is interesting depending on the sector the insurance
00:10:11is higher or lower is it not the same percentage for everyone no the insurance is not higher or lower
00:10:18but the cost of it the premium that they wanted to introduce what it would be different so um and
00:10:26it
00:10:26it's on basis of the um of the insurance so in our place in in our case we have one
00:10:35insurance i mean
00:10:35there's no difference and it's not ours it is our unemployment benefit society so uh they have one
00:10:45level which applies to everyone and in our case the sector is very very large because we have all
00:10:50private sector all white color workers apart from bank and insurance but there are many other trade
00:10:56unions which are much much narrower in uh their organizing that are just cutting through a very small
00:11:03segment um i mean we are in terms of numbers we are a giant but there are many trade unions
00:11:10which
00:11:10are much smaller and if they have their own benefit unemployment benefit society with insurance linked to
00:11:16it then they could be hit hard so this was something that was so in the process in in uh
00:11:21around 2006
00:11:23roughly 20 years ago yeah okay and this leads to a question i wanted to ask you how how is
00:11:31the
00:11:31landscape actually looking in in sweden uh how many trade unions are there because i was uh talking
00:11:38to your swedish or to your finnish colleague and i was flabbergasted that the number is 80
00:11:44or roughly 80 yeah and i live in switzerland in austria and we are at seven and you know between
00:11:52seven and 80 there is a lot of space so well i guess you are somewhere in the middle but
00:11:59i'm just you
00:12:00know guessing so uh well i mean it depends on how you count it also uh we are one way
00:12:07we have three
00:12:07big ones because that the central organizations which is often in other countries seen as the trade union
00:12:13uh but in our system i think it's more the the federation uh which belongs to a central
00:12:23organization that is uh uh the more important one because that's where you have your you have your
00:12:30closer um affiliation as a member with this organization um yeah what how many are there roughly
00:12:40again i don't need precise number and date of birth i just when you say 10 i believe you when
00:12:46you say 50
00:12:47i believe you i have no idea no no no it's it's it's i think it's like 30 uh ish
00:12:52okay it could possibly
00:12:55be not make sense it's fine it's just so that people understand how it's done because that's that's
00:13:04where i what i'm trying to find out with this discussion among other things is how things are done
00:13:09in different countries and what is the best model because my first intuition was when i learned about
00:13:16austria and seven it's like the less the better because then then it's stronger but then i was uh
00:13:24talking to a colleague from finland and he said 80 and they are more than twice as successful as
00:13:31austria is so as my intuitions go this this this one that yeah let's commit let's put it all together
00:13:40because then it's strong and then it has to be successful obviously goes down the toilet because
00:13:46even in 80 you can have pretty decent results so so in your case it's somewhere in the middle and
00:13:52you are even better which seems to indicate that the middle ground is the best way
00:14:00well i think you can argue both ways there i mean we had our journey with the union that i
00:14:06mean we are
00:14:07now the clearly clearly the largest union in sweden and it came out of a merger that was done in
00:14:142008
00:14:16between then the uh the the white collar workers in the industries uh their union what called cif and
00:14:24then we had htf which was uh for commerce services um ngos non-governmental organizations and so on
00:14:32so um and there we saw we saw the trend that in particular in the industry uh we had more
00:14:40like
00:14:41um servification it more and more industries started to carry out services we also had quite a lot of
00:14:51members which uh were belonging to these um temporary work agencies uh so by definition they were in
00:15:04services but they were also working in the industry in their daily jobs so they they were rented out from
00:15:12services to work in industry so we started seeing this blurring of the boundaries uh and uh i think
00:15:21i mean the leadership on both sides saw that we are now getting more and more into these great territories
00:15:28we're having potentially more and more disputes over who should have which member uh should we not try to
00:15:36work differently with this and this is when this marriage was made the um the uh kind of solution to
00:15:45the problem was that okay we we merge we big build one big union uh that uh deals with and
00:15:53the others
00:15:53follow suit or this was rather than an exception in sweden when you say that it's like 30 unions yeah
00:16:00i know i think it's more thinking about it i think it's more closer to 45 because on the academics
00:16:06they
00:16:06have much more smaller unions that's still so so you like you are like a giant and the others are
00:16:13well
00:16:13somewhere around 10 ish or 20 000 or something like that of members i guess i mean we for for
00:16:21quite a few
00:16:21years we were number two because the the municipality workers uh which is a blue collar union belonging
00:16:29to the central organization lo but you only belongs to tco um that was for many years the the number
00:16:37one
00:16:37union but as we have also seen well first of all i mean you you you know that the trend
00:16:44in
00:16:45uh white color so yeah also like cutbacks in welfare um so uh there have been they have been dropping
00:16:55members um uh while we have instead been growing in our membership and one of the reasons there come
00:17:03simply out of the fact that the labor market composition is changing where have we see more
00:17:08growth in our areas which means that if we don't increase we're actually dropping in density
00:17:15so we need to increase it to just maintain our density and we are maintaining our density and
00:17:20we're even improving it a bit and one of our biggest tasks right now is to not only recruit members
00:17:26because this was something that we we started really doing like four four five years after the
00:17:34merger we had this internal discussion that arrived on the conclusion that okay we we are now well below
00:17:42500 000 and we're continuing to drop we had the situation with the government uh the changes in
00:17:49policy uh where you i mean became much more expensive to be be a trade union member also the link
00:17:56with the
00:17:56unemployment benefit society it was severed a bit there but still people saw so i just want bill to pay
00:18:06i'm
00:18:07a member of the union and this other thing also um and then when they had to make the choice
00:18:13between
00:18:14them and more people stayed in this unemployment benefit society so we had a process there where
00:18:19we arrived at the conclusion uh in our national board um and i was uh i was actually a member
00:18:26of the national
00:18:27board at the time as an employee representative so staff representative on the on the board and i remember the
00:18:34discussions that we have had among our colleagues they were like what have what have they been
00:18:39smoking because the decision that they made what they they wanted to go for a membership number of 600
00:18:44000 and we were then like 450 000 as ambitions go this was pretty ambitious yeah exactly it was it
00:18:53was like
00:18:54a crazy target but uh it served us well in the sense that uh we couldn't just improve a bit
00:19:01we had to
00:19:02completely rethink everything uh there was a lot of obviously you did no yes we did and successfully
00:19:09also and of course we let's be honest we we we have a good um treasury chest and we put
00:19:16some money
00:19:16into use to to make ads uh on tv and everything so that was one of the things which made
00:19:24us much more
00:19:25visible so we became more top of mind when people actually were thinking about okay i should join a union
00:19:30should i do this one then we had also by the way is there a choice in sweden isn't it
00:19:36like you know
00:19:37differentiated that some unions are responsible for this kind of workers and some for this so
00:19:43actually you know like there is not much choice in some countries no
00:19:49yes it's it's okay no interesting because we have this as i mentioned we have these three uh central
00:19:55organizations uh elo the blue color one tco the white color one which we belong to and from a union
00:20:02side and also saco which is the academics uh if you are in a worker profession a blue color profession
00:20:11then you will belong to the elo union which organizes the field where you work same time if you
00:20:18or if you are a white color worker uh then you would belong to the tco union which organizes the
00:20:26sector where you work but there's also the academics and they work differently so they organize on basis of
00:20:33profession and and education so for example we have in our membership we have a lot of engineers
00:20:40but there's also in in uh in the saco central organization there is also um what is their english
00:20:49name now ssa association of swedish graduate engineers i think like sweden's engineers is the
00:20:55short name in swedish um and they organize only engineers uh we organize of course much broader so
00:21:03people that are engineers they can choose either to go with them or with us if they work
00:21:08for a great area so how do you sort it out you you can accept it that they go both
00:21:14ways
00:21:16i mean there we have an open competition and we are of course very happy when so actually you you
00:21:22you look at it as a challenge it sounds like yeah like yeah the best one wins something like that
00:21:28okay
00:21:28i mean we have a we have different uh different thoughts about what is the good way to organize
00:21:35uh and i think that's also one of the criticisms against uh uh the formation of uh when when we
00:21:43did the
00:21:43merger because there was a lot of discussion what will happen the with the identity it will be just
00:21:47like so huge people will no longer feel that they are belonging to like this is the white collar worker
00:21:54union for the industry that had a long history and also on the on the other side as well
00:22:00um and this of course the the matter of identity uh i would say of course it's probably easier to
00:22:08work
00:22:08with for the saco unions because they organize on basis of education and profession but it also means
00:22:16that they they can't work together in the same way okay they can they can have like joint uh
00:22:24workplace structures in between the different unions but a lot of the policy that goes on in the
00:22:30union is of course relating to their different field of occupation and we are working differently
00:22:38and and cater for a larger audience in that sense so this leads to a question martin important
00:22:46one what exactly were the changes you implemented back in the day when you merged and when this
00:22:52challenge of 150 000 new members was laid upon miracles so what what is the special
00:23:02source ingredients that you came up with because i can tell you we and our union because we are doing
00:23:08it so as as white color as it gets people are like ah you know so how did you made
00:23:17it sweet sweet for
00:23:19well people as i said white colors used to be okay you are an exception to a rule but in
00:23:26most cases i would
00:23:27say that white color is the hardest job to unionize because for reasons that are complicated they somehow
00:23:34feel that they don't need to eat the union because their salary is 10 percent higher of the blue color
00:23:39so
00:23:40i mean they feel rich yeah even though they they're actually getting more screwed in many cases than the
00:23:46blue-collar people were okay but this is the false identity of those people that somehow i guess was
00:23:54addressed in a manner that they woke up to the bitter reality that they need a union even more than
00:24:01the
00:24:02blue-collar people do maybe huh so what did you do uh well i would say well first of all
00:24:09it didn't come
00:24:10immediately after the merger it took some years because and when we saw like if it went so easy
00:24:15then everybody would be doing it so it was kind of i can imagine that you made some mistakes but
00:24:19it's
00:24:20life we were we're investing in making the the new union the merger shown uh well noticed on the on
00:24:27streets and everything uh and uh we still saw a decline in numbers i think one of the main components
00:24:34that
00:24:35was um that was um that was responsible for our success was uh the fact that we did a large
00:24:43culture
00:24:43change um sometimes decisions that were really frowned upon by many by by members and and uh elected
00:24:55people in our structures and also by by staff i remember for example this was during the years when i
00:25:03was
00:25:03uh a trade unionist internally so representing the staff in in our headquarters um the the decision
00:25:11was made to create a sales department and that was just like shocking how can we work with sales we're
00:25:20a trade union this is like we we represent workers white-collar workers we can't we can't it's it's not
00:25:25like we're selling an insurance well actually that we are now because we are selling this unemployment
00:25:32uh insurance uh insurance add-on that's one of the big so they made sales representatives out of you
00:25:40maybe not officially but they gave you the skills to sell or what exactly was that we created a
00:25:46structure internally which had which was tasked with uh well with recruiting in a more professional
00:25:54manner than than than what had been the case before and i think the what we took out of because
00:26:02i mean we
00:26:03recruited people externally and i think some of them came from like direct marketing and like had these
00:26:10very commercial oriented um experiences before in their work life and i think that's really served us well
00:26:19um it was very tough to see this culture change but we saw also the results and that's what counts
00:26:27because the results is more members more members makes us stronger at the negotiating table which makes for
00:26:35better conditions for our members so okay it was difficult to to see this okay we have a sales department
00:26:42but
00:26:43yeah okay so how exactly was it done so the sales department was recruiting the members or the sales
00:26:50department was there to kind of teach you how to recruit members it was many different things uh one of
00:26:58the things of course was actually recruiting members we also this is one of the mistakes that we had to
00:27:05apologize for unions to as well we remember that we uh we rented the services of a telemarketing company
00:27:13and they were tasked with uh calling people and asking them to join as members and they did uh
00:27:21they did a good job at getting a lot of members but quite a few of them should not have
00:27:25been our
00:27:25members and that was what we were saying is that we have a division so we we got members that
00:27:30were blue
00:27:31color workers that were not supposed to be okay so they went all around the place and whoever was there
00:27:37they just took yeah so we had to cut they had to fulfill their quota so it was it was
00:27:43a grandma
00:27:44never mind and she's a member now yeah okay exactly so uh we had we had really to stop that
00:27:52cooperation
00:27:52and uh i think that one of the outcomes there was that we built up our own structure for making
00:27:58these
00:27:59calls um calls often on leads but also some cold calls as well um which which was um also contributing
00:28:08to our membership growth uh but our main recruiter for many years it it's been google adwords um when
00:28:17people enter searches um we paid for ads and got us top of the top of the search results really
00:28:27google
00:28:28saved you okay yeah again as surprises go this is a big one this is something i didn't expect that
00:28:39yeah all right and i i mean this this is something i said in many many times i've spoken about
00:28:45our
00:28:46journey with the membership growth this has been something that many people react to what really google
00:28:50so yeah i mean well i'm one of among them yeah all right and uh so so it looks like
00:28:58it was a mirage of
00:28:59multiple of kind of strategies it was the sales department it was this telemarketing it was this
00:29:05proactive google ads that you when people are asking those specific questions suddenly you popped into the
00:29:12searches yeah was there something else that kind of stands prominent this is the way how we tackled it and
00:29:19we managed to grow yes uh i would say also you should talk about what's like lies beneath the the
00:29:27iceberg
00:29:28also there was the culture change uh and the the sales department certainly contributed to this like
00:29:33we had to think differently it was like a reaction that okay we are now in a new new world
00:29:39but i think
00:29:41also one of the things that we did which really led to a culture change was changing some processes
00:29:49internally um using uh management strategies um models for uh strategic leadership inside the organization
00:30:02which basically this the way that we organized work then um was basically leading to every single
00:30:14worker inside our union being challenged with what can i do in my job to contribute to membership growth
00:30:23so we had this uh steering model um that um made you ask on on the on the national level
00:30:31the national
00:30:32board made these targets but then everything went out in the regional level and also the national
00:30:38headquarters we we had every unit had their own planning uh we have our own planning in in the different
00:30:47subunits uh so there were a lot of conversation going on when every one of those conversation was also
00:30:54always thinking about what can i do or what can we do as a team or as an office or
00:31:00as a large organization
00:31:01do to contribute to member growth so it led to a lot of really good conversations and also uh led
00:31:10to
00:31:10ideas about uh activities and targets um that were then really well followed up on
00:31:18uh so we had for a few quite a few years we had there was a lot there was a
00:31:24lot of measuring and
00:31:26and uh discussions about follow-ups and targets and stuff but that also really contributed to
00:31:33to um kind of a mindset change uh in in staff and i remember also the the this and to
00:31:42support them in
00:31:43different ways and one of these uh journeys that we did there with culture change was to install kind
00:31:51of a mindset in our regional reps that when whenever they went to a workplace they always had
00:31:59to carry out something which could contribute to membership growth so it could be like walking around
00:32:07in in the in the cafeteria talking to potential members maybe handing out a couple flyers or whatever
00:32:13it could be many different things but just to have this always top of mind and to work with this
00:32:21in the teams it made a difference also in numbers also every single office every regional office
00:32:31had their own target set and they followed up on this like i think it was even weekly that they
00:32:37did this follow-ups to see where they are in terms of membership growth so they worked very actively
00:32:43so you it was really like a corporation because i was in sales for 15 years and this is this
00:32:51sounds
00:32:51familiar man yeah we did not get bonuses to my knowledge though we recruited a lot of members
00:32:58but just a good good feeling that the job well done yeah you slept better that's the bonus
00:33:04yeah but not all slept better i mean we created the conditions to be stronger uh as a trade union
00:33:10because member numbers are so important no definitely uh this leads to a question to
00:33:17better understand how union is actually set up because this is something that you mentioned
00:33:23these regional offices and everything so what is actually the structure because uh every country
00:33:28runs a little bit differently so obviously you have your headquarter you have your regional offices
00:33:34when you take the whole union as a one big happy family how big is it actually the professionals is
00:33:40it like thousand people or something in the ballpark bigger smaller around yeah i think it's just below
00:33:47one thousand uh and you are structured regionally or you are structured by the departments like yeah
00:33:54we are covering this particular profession so i don't know how you do it yes and yes it's
00:34:01important fine or what do you do because in some regions i imagine there is because there is a bigger
00:34:06factory or whatever then then the the profession is more concentrated in the region of sweden i guess
00:34:13it's usually the case but sometimes it's spread evenly you know yeah what do you do well the the
00:34:22the workplace unit is always our main unit so if there is a local trade union club that's how we
00:34:28call
00:34:29it if you have a local trade union structure it's called the club uh so if you are five people
00:34:34then
00:34:34you can join together and say okay we're going to create a club and by the way how it's done
00:34:41in
00:34:42sweden so what is the minimal number of employees that a company has to have to to get a union
00:34:47or is is
00:34:48there no a minimal number of employees or even like two two two guys together in a company one of
00:34:54them
00:34:54can join or create a union in that company yeah so that in that sense we we don't create a
00:35:01union in
00:35:01a company we become members of a member of the union but but you know someone joins from a company
00:35:06of two
00:35:07and suddenly there is a union in that company if you have a collective agreement uh then things change
00:35:13when you are in a union but if you don't have a collective agreement nothing really happens when you
00:35:19join a union some of the rights you get only through a collective agreement so in in the
00:35:25workplaces where we have local clubs we in most cases have uh collective agreements but there is no
00:35:32there's no real link in between them uh in the sense that if people come together and unionize like
00:35:40we're going to be members of this uh trade union in our case union that doesn't mean that then that
00:35:47the employer is obliged to enter a collective agreement there is no like they have in the
00:35:53u.s for example and some other countries that if you if you go then you have to have this
00:35:59uh
00:35:59referendum among no there is this threshold of 50 of the employee and the union is created and
00:36:05suddenly you have to yeah we have nothing like that so every single worker in in a company can be
00:36:12uh trade union member and we can demand um a collective agreement and the employer can still
00:36:18refuse and i don't know if you have heard about the tesla conflict that has been gone for quite a
00:36:24few
00:36:24years now that's the situation by the way it's still running i thought that this was one already so
00:36:29it's still running yeah yeah it's still running ah yeah i thought that i thought that it was like
00:36:34you know elon had to say that yeah well you guys in scandinavia i win yeah so no it was
00:36:41actually in the
00:36:42news today about it and yesterday because there was a court decision saying that yeah so we've been
00:36:50trying every single way to make it more difficult of course for tm sweden is the is the formal name
00:36:56for
00:36:57tesla in sweden uh to to we make it to make it difficult for them to run their operations
00:37:03because we want to put pressure on them so that they will enter into a collective agreement with us
00:37:12we have this right we have the right to strike we have the right to sympathy sympathy measures
00:37:19and this is something which is protected by our constitution
00:37:23now uh what we've had for a long time now is that we had union after union after union trying
00:37:31to do
00:37:31their part because this is something that we're really in together this is a threat to the
00:37:36swedish model which is what we call it with with how we organize um our labor market and one of
00:37:44the
00:37:44basic features of how we organize the the labor market in sweden is that we try to really settle
00:37:50disputes between employer and trade union and try to leave the politicians out of it as much as
00:37:56possible they sometimes need to go come in and and like set set the baseline like a threshold for
00:38:03things and they need to set up structures and they need to deliver when when we as social partners on
00:38:09both employer and trade union side agree on on stuff like for example we had negotiations around
00:38:15upskilling and and how to um well how to change paths in your work life how to go to another
00:38:22field if you
00:38:24if you're if you want to change careers and so on um and there we negotiate with employers we came
00:38:31up with
00:38:31a system uh where we also needed the the state to come in like the government to step in and
00:38:39say okay
00:38:39we're going to take this part we're going to provide the possibility to to financing for education under
00:38:47these conditions and so on so that's one of the things there um otherwise when it comes to collective
00:38:55agreements and and what is required there um and and what what we what we see from from both employers
00:39:04and trade unions and trade unions and this is something that we really here we really shake hands
00:39:10employers and trade unions we we do want things to be determined to a large extent by the social
00:39:17partners by the trade unions and the and the employees so a lot of things come out of the collective
00:39:24agreement that's where we have a lot of the rules we have no minimum wage in sweden for example
00:39:30that comes only through the collective agreement but because so much is governed by the common
00:39:36collective agreement we also need a right as a trade union to be able to exert some pressure
00:39:40on the employer to actually join uh and and enter into a collective agreement they are as the situation
00:39:50is now completely 100 free not to enter a collective agreement that is what's tm sweden tesla is now doing
00:39:57they are choosing not to enter into a collective agreement but then we as a trade union have the
00:40:03right to exert pressure on them to convince them to actually take the step to to do this and we're
00:40:10doing this in every single way that we can and as we see that this is a threat to all
00:40:15of us trade unions
00:40:17we're really trying to chip in and do our parts all of us for example we have we have workers
00:40:23that
00:40:24uh work on certification of the lifts that need to raise the vehicles then they when they do repairs
00:40:32these lifts need to be repaired i think it's one once every six months if they don't receive the
00:40:39certification they can't use it because then it's not deemed to be safe we have put those into blockade
00:40:47so the people working in those uh jobs uh in those companies we have put into blockade so they are
00:40:55no
00:40:55longer allowed us as members of of our union to do that job and if they are in another union
00:41:03i mean
00:41:03they they would also be asked not to do this uh if they want to to yeah um yeah but
00:41:11this dispute is
00:41:12running for like two or three years when i remember it correctly now maybe even longer
00:41:17yeah it's it's quite a few years and this is as struggles go this one is a huge one no
00:41:24yeah
00:41:24and if metal they have all the workers in tm sweden on on on strike so uh there's a lot
00:41:31of people just
00:41:33um yeah receiving their paychecks from from the the metal workers even if metal instead and then
00:41:40they are doing their part in chipping in like for example standing outside the premises and
00:41:44handing out flyers asking people not to shop there and so on and like and they are striking for two
00:41:50years or they are in and out of the job and sometimes they work and sometimes they strike
00:41:54no they're striking for a very long time yeah okay wow yeah so so so this is paradigm shifting strike
00:42:02then this is this is this is like what the uh miners were in in great britain they were
00:42:09striking for a year and in the end and lost or the the paradigm shift with the air traffickers in
00:42:15americano and when when really like like the big fight yeah like this is this is so what decides the
00:42:21history or better to say the future of well the unions okay when we now have the court case which
00:42:29uh
00:42:29uh i believe i've settled yesterday um which in which tesla they are trying all these legal ways to
00:42:38to get what they want through and also i would say almost illegal ways as well um but they have
00:42:46been
00:42:46for example they have been uh rejected the possibility to uh attach one of their charge for many of their
00:42:54charges like there's chargers all over sweden that are not connected to the electrical grid
00:42:59because we are uh from many different unions putting the tasks relating to the connection of them
00:43:07uh to the grid we're putting a blockade on that so that means that um they don't get they don't
00:43:14get the
00:43:15the the juice for it they don't okay this leads to a question why are they doing this fast because
00:43:20i i what i've read is like it's 200 workers or something of that magnitude it's not like the
00:43:26uh biggest company on the planet with 100 000 of employees that is on the stake here it's like a
00:43:33small
00:43:33it's as precedents go yeah but you know it's sweden so it's sorry to make you smaller than you are
00:43:41but
00:43:41it's like it's like yeah you know is is is this kind of like personal thing that it's like more
00:43:48about the ego of
00:43:49elon than about the rationality of let's do it because i mean tell me otherwise the comp the the
00:43:57i'm not gonna argue again those presumptions i i i mean we really don't know what what is behind
00:44:03behind this uh in in our way of looking at it it makes no sense because the money that they
00:44:10lost is
00:44:11probably bigger than than the collective much more yeah and i mean this is the way that we organize work
00:44:16in sweden we we try to we we don't put everything into legislation we put it into into the collective
00:44:22agreement which is a balanced solution which has been determined in the social dialogue between
00:44:29employers and trade unions so i mean it's it's in their interest as well
00:44:34uh-huh so for us elon sees is otherwise and we know all how elon is we've seen his life
00:44:42so when you
00:44:44when you take the the the play things from a child and the tantrum follows and this is probably the
00:44:50tantrum that you have the privilege to experience okay well that's just i mean it's it's happy sad
00:44:58the court case which was settled yeah well the court case which was settled at least it went against
00:45:04them so in in the trade union's favor uh it was about uh putting the work on the blockade which
00:45:11is
00:45:11about uh attaching these charges to the electrical grid so what the what the court decided was that
00:45:18no this is a constitutional right if we would say that because of laws around electricity or whatever
00:45:28it was around um they have the right to get this connection
00:45:34but the what the court then said was that if we give them this right we void uh the uh
00:45:42the
00:45:43industrial action of the trade unions we make it useless it makes it completely ineffective
00:45:50uh so uh for to to for the for the court not to take sides they need to let the
00:45:59industrial action go on
00:46:01and not not say that you have that's cool that's cool lucky you know it could have been on otherwise
00:46:08no
00:46:08and yeah when you listen to the stories from around the world and then yeah at least sweden functions
00:46:15somehow still well this could be challenged also in court i mean and and also it is not undisputed
00:46:21this is something which we'll have to really take uh take care of in the public debate because there's
00:46:27always these discussions oh aren't we giving the trade unions too much power with the right to sympathy
00:46:34measures and so on uh for us no absolutely not because the way that we have composed uh the rights
00:46:42of
00:46:43unions and the rights of employers and also what lies in in uh in the legislature's uh field of
00:46:49competence uh we need to have we need to have these muscles because without it we'd be we'd be
00:46:57completely unbalanced and then we would as trade unions need to look more for solutions which are not
00:47:05built on collective bargaining but which are built on legislation and the employers don't want that either
00:47:10uh they want to have the solution that we have now which offers us also the positive possibility to
00:47:16make adaptations uh relating to which circ which sectors um that the collective agreement is made for
00:47:24okay so a collective agreement question to dig a little bit into detail so how it's structured in
00:47:31sweden because now we were talking about tesla longer but uh i was just curious because well i i i
00:47:38really
00:47:38thought this one is over because you know elon lost you have won and and you know it's it's a
00:47:43history uh
00:47:45so how is it actually done with the collective bargaining so you have only sectoral bargaining or
00:47:50you have a mixture of sectoral as well as uh per company collective bargaining so we know how
00:47:58you differentiate how it's all kind of done because you are a huge union and i can imagine that not
00:48:04everyone can be covered by a collective bargaining on a sectoral level so you know what do you do with
00:48:10the grain zones well first of all regarding our structure uh we i mean i talked about this before
00:48:17that the the the main the main unit of of our trade union is the local club but that club
00:48:26is then also
00:48:27organized into regions and there we have we have like a democracy structure which is on one side
00:48:32on the other side also lies the the offices and the staff so we have the national headquarters
00:48:39part of the national headquarters are regional units so clusters of regions
00:48:47are working together in teams and i don't so on one hand there is a professional from
00:48:54union and on the other hand there is the professional from the company yeah the the the member of the
00:49:00union
00:49:00something like that no we have the like the one thousand staff we we cater for for everything large
00:49:07part of our staff is of course out in the regional offices but they are employees a lot of the
00:49:14trade union
00:49:15work is being done by the clubs and they are elected representatives when they are elected representatives
00:49:21in a company with a collective agreement you get rights one of those rights is the right to time
00:49:28so you can dedicate part of your working time to trade union work that's one of the rights that comes
00:49:36with being an elected representative of a union inside a company with a collective agreement if you don't
00:49:43have a collective agreement you don't get the right to free time so that's one of the reasons not at
00:49:49all or
00:49:49or less or how it's done not not at all not at all okay we don't we don't we don't
00:49:55have the right we
00:49:56don't have the legislation that uh that offers um uh yeah specific conditions for elected representatives
00:50:07if there is no collective agreement so it's only when the collective agreement is in force
00:50:12uh that also these uh privileges to the union uh start working which is also why one of the reasons
00:50:21of course why we're fighting for collective agreements uh and in many places where where we have workers
00:50:27that are fighting for a collective agreement and they are forming clubs they need to do the work
00:50:33outside of office hours because they are not allowed to take their their work time by the way how are
00:50:39you
00:50:39handling it because if they are doing it they are doing in their spare time for free or are you
00:50:44kind
00:50:44covering their time somehow so that they are motivated to do it because you know it's do your spare or
00:50:52sacrifice your spare time for the work in a union okay it's nice for one or two hours but when
00:50:58when
00:50:59this fight like in elon's case takes three years then it's hundreds of hours of time and well you know
00:51:06not
00:51:06everyone is willing to do it so how do you handle this the situations where it takes longer than
00:51:12everyone wants well in the case of of tesla and the and these sympathy measures sympathy measures that
00:51:19are linked to the tesla dispute uh there there are decisions about strike actions for example and
00:51:27and the decision on strike action always comes with a payment also so the the the trade union member
00:51:33that goes on strike they will also get a strike fund funding from from by the way what is it
00:51:4060 percent
00:51:41of their salary or how it's handled in sweden all hundred okay yeah but we don't need to pay taxes
00:51:49on it so
00:51:49it's a special the special rules okay okay so they just get the net income but it counts as if
00:51:55they were
00:51:56working because the taxes are gonna okay yeah got it and then then for the unions for the people in
00:52:04the clubs that are not uh covered by the collective bargaining agreement yet yeah how do they do their
00:52:11jobs when it takes longer it might take longer than they do it for free the whole time well uh
00:52:18well first
00:52:19of all if if there is no collective agreement in place there's probably no not also any dialogue with the
00:52:25employer um from trade union side they they don't want the union there to represent the workers
00:52:34there's i mean this is a culture issue also we see this in many american companies where there is this
00:52:43there's this concept of no we need to give the individual right to the workers to have this dialogue
00:52:48with us as employer which of course means that we are completely imbalanced when it comes to to power
00:52:57uh because if we stand alone in dialogue with employer well i mean that's why we created unions
00:53:04in the first place so that we could stand stronger together and say this is the demands that we are
00:53:08making as collective we will not work for salaries not to mention that one person strikes in a big company
00:53:16then like no one gives a fuck it's like i'm on strike well yeah enjoy so when so when we
00:53:23have the
00:53:24situation that we have uh members or even potential members that want to take this fight uh for a
00:53:30collective agreement in the workplace then of course our uh our reps from the from the regional offices
00:53:37they will go to them um possibly not at the workplace because they are not always allowed there
00:53:44but they will have meetings with uh with the people that are interested in taking this struggle and i
00:53:49mean this is not a decision which comes lightly because it it can be um it can take a long
00:53:56time as
00:53:56as as you can see from the tesla fight uh and also it's it's going to be uh quite difficult
00:54:05and
00:54:05tiring but of course i mean you're doing something for yourself and for your colleagues so if you win then
00:54:11it's a real win okay so so so people do it we don't we don't take this decision lightly people
00:54:16do it
00:54:17totally for free till the collective bargaining agreement kicks in and they are hypothetically
00:54:22freed for their professional union work till till it happens they are doing it for free
00:54:29well we don't pay people on the workplace level for this i mean if they would become uh a regional
00:54:36uh elected uh elected they become part of our democratic structures in our regional boards for
00:54:42example there i mean there we would pay them if they would be allowed to be off work
00:54:50uh because they don't have that right when they are not uh that's that's why i'm asking
00:54:56in the situation when there is no back collective bargaining signed yet those you said it yourself
00:55:02they can do it they can't be doing the union job during the office hours or when they are working
00:55:07so you have they have to do it in their spare time yeah and that's kind of a sacrifice that's
00:55:13what i was
00:55:13saying that not everyone is willing to do that's why i was asking that maybe as part of the strategy
00:55:20to
00:55:20motivate people to go into this battle you i mean you don't have to kind of you know give them
00:55:26millions
00:55:26of euros or what uh at least something so that they are motivated to to start the union and start
00:55:32this
00:55:32struggle in the first place yeah um i don't i don't know i mean i think it's it's also not
00:55:41a monetary
00:55:42issue i mean you you want to do this uh for yourself and for your colleagues uh to share but
00:55:48you know
00:55:48it's it's always like how much do you want to do it when when it's totally for free and it
00:55:53takes two
00:55:54years and and and your wife is bitching yeah and you know yeah and you should be with your kids
00:56:02and and well you know so that's that's that's why i was asking because this is this is a dispute
00:56:09that
00:56:09we are having in our union as well and in my opinion till it's not uh done and uh and
00:56:16you are not free
00:56:17as a professional trade unionist in the company that at least something is nice to get because
00:56:24do it for free for years oh i i am not i can understand the people that a not everyone
00:56:31wants
00:56:31to do it that it's really hard to find the people who will uh do this shitty job because you
00:56:38know you
00:56:38have to be fighting your employer and you know it's as fun goes this is not much fun and and
00:56:46b just
00:56:47expect people to do it for years sometimes for free you know i i i can totally understand and that
00:56:55not
00:56:55everyone is willing to do it you know and then then we are in this sketch 22 situation that we
00:57:00want to
00:57:00grow but there is no one who wants to join because it's only complicated and it's only you know unpleasantness
00:57:10that it's on the horizon so i thought that maybe you do it you you have some sweetness for the
00:57:17people
00:57:17in the beginning you know i mean first of all i would say that uh a decisional strike doesn't come
00:57:23lightly so that that very rarely happens the the tesla situation is completely unique in the sense of
00:57:29how long it's been going and and how many people are involved with all these sympathy sympathy measures as
00:57:35well there's a lot of industrial action going on as regards tesla um so it it's it's quite unique i
00:57:43mean in most cases it's it's not really um a difficult task to to get the employer to to sign
00:57:54a collective
00:57:54agreement the way you sign a collective agreement in sweden is usually by entering into an employer
00:58:01organization that's the that's the main route of of uh joining a collective agreement it's not
00:58:09writing one directly with us if we would write one directly with the company it would
00:58:15in any case be exactly the same as one of the sectoral ones and who's doing the negotiation
00:58:22in the case as you are saying now that it's specifically for this company from the union and
00:58:28goes to the employer and this makes the okay and and for many for many sectors we we we don't
00:58:36allow
00:58:37this at all we we uh the the direct collective agreement we want now we be because part also of
00:58:47the
00:58:47setup part of what makes this work is that they are also uh part of an organization so you are
00:58:53pressuring
00:58:54the employer to go into the sectoral agreement to join the whole thing because that's the best way
00:59:00to join the employer organization okay okay okay okay got it interesting okay so uh let's talk a little
00:59:08bit more about the whole principle of fair competition so that's also what's in it for the employers they
00:59:13they don't want they don't want to to to be to be fighting over stuff in in this um by
00:59:21by dumping conditions
00:59:22or by racing racing stuff so uh so from the data you are running somewhere around 65 i'm not talking
00:59:31about
00:59:31union and i'm talking about the swedish union as such uh which is well whole number because uh you are
00:59:38you are
00:59:39in number two or number three in europe and the question i wanted to ask uh whether you know i
00:59:45mean
00:59:45it is so something i always am wondering what the hell are doing the fellas in iceland because there are
00:59:5390 percent and maybe because you are you are in the north you might know why not then it's fine
00:59:59it's just
01:00:00something is very special in iceland because when you look at the data from the last 30 years
01:00:06everywhere the unions dropped everywhere except for iceland on one hand yeah it's a it's it's like a
01:00:14bigger city so you know and plus it's an island so like everyone knows everyone but still i i i
01:00:22was
01:00:23always kind of curious if someone from scandinavia knows what they are doing because they are the
01:00:29shining star on the hill like the best on the planet is best on the planet in union space
01:00:36so what do you know they don't need to they don't need to work very hard to get the members
01:00:41let's put
01:00:41it that way okay so the setup there is that the employer is the one paying for the membership so
01:00:49you
01:00:49have the choice that either you can get the membership or you cannot get the membership and
01:00:54either way the employer is going to pay for it so would i want to be getting the perks of
01:01:00a trade
01:01:00union membership or not so this is something unique in their constitution or well i don't know if it's
01:01:07in the constitution but that is in their system that's the way the system is is composed that the employer
01:01:13is
01:01:13are you envious in sweden or or it's like this is too easy you know i i really like a
01:01:20bit of fight
01:01:21no it's not about uh fight i think it's also about i mean we want to organize people so that
01:01:28they will uh
01:01:29stand behind us uh and stand together also for for to fight for better working conditions if if just
01:01:37everyone becomes members i i think like almost automatically maybe it would be a different
01:01:42situation that has also been one of the criticisms against uh uh using this um insurance add-on as as
01:01:51uh as as like a sole recruiting strategy this is something when we're not trying to do anymore so
01:01:58much um or at least if we are working on basis of this insurance and saying okay if you become
01:02:06unemployed then you are likely to lose this much money if you're not a member of us then then we
01:02:11need
01:02:11to also work on uh what happens to these when they do join and one of the things that we're
01:02:17doing right
01:02:17now is that at the same time as we've seen uh a growth in our membership um and actually also
01:02:26small growth in our density uh from from a newland side what we also have seen is a rather drastic
01:02:34drop
01:02:34in the number of elected representatives and this is a threat also to how we have composed our model
01:02:42because we believe that the disputes they need to be settled locally that's where we need to have
01:02:47the dialogue between the local trade union club and the local employer and it also goes up and also
01:02:53of course in bigger in bigger companies there you have the local clubs you elect the representatives of
01:02:59who should be on the company board and so on so it's like it's like a democratic structure as well
01:03:04so we really believe that we need to have this representation that to for it to work
01:03:10okay another question i wanted to ask you is uh education because the struggle for better wages
01:03:18working conditions and whatnot that was that's the first thing that pops into the mind of most people
01:03:23when talking about unions but unions uh historically were not only fighting yeah it was also uh kind of
01:03:32like an educational tool of working classes to well as uh the consciousness of the working class goes
01:03:40it didn't just you know happen you know someone had to teach it to the people that you have your
01:03:46rights
01:03:46because a and b and c and d so what do you do on that front uh do you have
01:03:51any any schools or or
01:03:54how how is it actually handled in union and primarily uh the educational part
01:04:00um well uh of course as as i think for many organizations and companies now a lot is being
01:04:10done online uh especially after covid of course um that completely changed how we work but after
01:04:21covid also there's been a bit of a pushback when our elected representatives that we when we met in
01:04:28congress they were saying like okay we've taken this too far now uh yes it's great that members can
01:04:35just click on on a link and then go online and get like a a course of 15 minutes or
01:04:42or or even spend
01:04:43a day or whatever um you can't spend a day by the way on on on on your work time
01:04:49unless you were
01:04:52elected representatives on the union and then also needs uh by the way sorry to jump in is there some
01:04:58time per year that the worker can spend on self-education in the unionization matters or this has to be
01:05:06done completely in the spare time uh no and yeah well oh that's a tricky one i mean there is
01:05:13no there is
01:05:14no specific right uh that says that you have this about a time for studies or whatever but if you
01:05:21are
01:05:22an elected representative then you are entitled to have the time you need to carry out your trade union
01:05:30duties and that also includes some training doesn't doesn't mean all training i mean we can't
01:05:37if we were to have um a course on on how to recruit well for example that's not really related
01:05:44to uh to
01:05:46the workplace that's more relating to us as union you can't you can't do that but okay so when it's
01:05:53workplace regulated you are freed when it's not then you have to do it in your spare time that's what
01:05:58you're
01:05:58saying yeah and okay of course i mean there's uh there's uh limitation i mean you you need to look
01:06:07at the the overall composition if you have a company of of uh several thousand employees well
01:06:14then you are allowed to have several people working full-time for the trade union but if you're a very
01:06:20small workplace then you can't have many working a lot of time obviously with the trade union duties
01:06:27another question i wanted to ask about the education before i forget because this is a
01:06:34interesting one for me what about the official education in schools and history of trade unions
01:06:42and stuff like that is is there something in sweden where you know small children and small like you can
01:06:49be 14 whatever but it's part of the school curriculum that they you know eight hour work day just didn't
01:06:56fall from the sky and and and and and vacation time and that there was the struggle and the first
01:07:03may
01:07:03just isn't a day off because whatever but you know there was this haymarket incident and people died
01:07:09and so on and so on and so on so that people understand from young age that everything we take
01:07:16for
01:07:16granted wasn't really granted but was fought for yeah or not at all because for example in finland that
01:07:25at least what uh your colleague told me there is nothing of that sort and definitely nothing of
01:07:31that sort in central europe yeah no i mean i wouldn't say that it's nothing of that sort but
01:07:35of course it's it's not from a real trade union perspective but they they would what we would have
01:07:40in our history education of course is to to tell about the like for example the development of the labor
01:07:47moon and there would be something okay and you are sure you you know this for a fact well i've
01:07:53gone
01:07:53through school myself so i know that i just because because this is this you are lucky one in sweden
01:07:59not
01:08:00every country has this it's so it's also about how how it's how it's taught i think we we are
01:08:06criticizing
01:08:07of course from from the trade union side that there's not enough for example label market knowledge
01:08:13taught in schools uh when you enter the labor market as a potential employee uh then you don't
01:08:21know so much of your rights as you should we think that we think that should schools and the
01:08:29the whole education system should equip um students better for working life and that that's not only
01:08:36about i mean that's not really about trading history and how we got here and why we have where we
01:08:41have
01:08:41the right to to to vacation and so on it's it's about also um looking after our own rights when
01:08:50we
01:08:50are out what do you think why are the schools failing in that matter they have to be aware that
01:08:57you know
01:08:57they are failing you are telling it to them so yeah yeah but i think there's a new debate i
01:09:06mean this
01:09:06debate pops up of now and then well there's a new debate now about a new national curriculum
01:09:13so let's see if we can put it into that process but um yeah i think i think it's important
01:09:18that
01:09:19students are or we think it's important that students are equipped for working life and that also includes
01:09:24learning about their rights okay cool we we do our part and we know that the employers are quite
01:09:31successful in this sense they uh they are they've been putting out a lot of material into schools
01:09:38for free which is for schools very beneficial so i mean we have the situation where many of the
01:09:45municipalities are not they don't have enough money to to buy school books and and stuff anymore and
01:09:55that i mean this is something that's going on for decades now uh so when the employer organizations have been
01:10:00been handing out for free uh courses about um yeah like the market economy for example i remember when i
01:10:10was myself was a student in uh what was like seventh grade or something like that i believe i was
01:10:19like
01:10:1913 14 at the time uh we had we had a session where we got to play like we we
01:10:27had our own ice cream kiosk
01:10:29uh in the summer uh in the summer so we had this uh pamphlet from the employer organizations where we
01:10:36could write how much we would sell the ice cream for how yeah like plan the whole setup of of
01:10:42a small
01:10:43business um now this is of course i mean this is part of of them uh marketing their ideology and
01:10:50we of course as a trade union need to do the same so we have had um corporations established between
01:10:58unions
01:10:59uh as regards uh trying to come closer to schools and inform about uh labor market about unions why
01:11:08people should be members of unions when they enter the workplace and so on so there is there is work
01:11:13being done on that as well cool cool cool and another question i had is the media landscape in sweden
01:11:21whether you have some uh newspapers that are you know funded by unions or co-funded by unions whether you
01:11:28have
01:11:28even maybe a tv channel or radio stations of of of whatever so that the you know let's call it
01:11:37a battle
01:11:38for brains yeah it's kind of not totally hundred percent uh occupied by uh elon musk and and
01:11:47zuckerberg and whatnot but uh and private media basically uh there is uh some counterbalance coming
01:11:56from maybe not only unions maybe the left parties as well maybe the cooperatives as well that there is a
01:12:02a collaboration between those who are on the left side of things so that the media landscape is not
01:12:08totally shifted to the right well there's been and this has been an ongoing discussion for decades as
01:12:16well about the the ownership concentration of media so we do see that there are large uh conglomerates
01:12:23which own uh several media outlets in in in the sector or field so we have uh we have a
01:12:31couple
01:12:32well like a handful different different media conglomerates um what what would be like the
01:12:39counterbalance to this well we do have public service of course public service television and
01:12:44public service radio part of the public service system is also that we have this education radio
01:12:51which makes education uh material both for radio and television as well uh what we have seen the past few
01:13:00years now is uh the unwillingness of the government to uh increase their funding there's even been some
01:13:11cuts i believe there and there's also been
01:13:17limitations put on what the public service uh companies can do and not do so for example they are
01:13:25no longer or now to put all their podcasts into into the space where we normally listen to podcasts
01:13:32like apple podcast and spotify or what what not uh they need to put one
01:13:39and what is the logic behind that well i mean the the reasoning behind this which yeah which many do
01:13:48not agree with that of course
01:13:49is that uh here we come with basically like tax funded uh material and we put it out there in
01:13:57the in the main marketplace
01:14:01where others which are not tax funded need to compete for freedom so they are saying that you can they
01:14:09can
01:14:09that that the tax um tax funded companies they have an advantage
01:14:17which which which the other have to okay sounds kind of logical but still so there is no media
01:14:26conglomerate something that is really created from the unions a newspaper that is run by the union
01:14:33something of that sort we have we have we have magazines run by trade unions of course uh and uh
01:14:39trade union close
01:14:41uh organizations but these are not big ones um also but i guess this is only for the members no
01:14:48it's not like uh
01:14:50yeah you know big swedish newspaper run by the union that is very union pro
01:14:56yeah and so on now we have we have i think is it not on the blue color side that
01:15:02there's not something which is not really linked to membership
01:15:05because in the past it used to be the case in many countries so that's why i'm wondering maybe
01:15:10somehow you survived the neoliberal push and you still have some media
01:15:16well also uh this is where the the labor movement um i mean labor movement at large is also uh
01:15:26it's not
01:15:26only elo but it's also the social democratic party we as an organization are non-party affiliated so we don't
01:15:33take sides so we are we are not social democratic party but the blue color unions uh that are
01:15:39organizing elo they are linked to the social democratic party um uh and they had their own
01:15:46media oh they do many many no had the head okay okay i heard the head yeah no this was
01:15:54sold a long
01:15:55time ago like i think it was like 80 80s or 1980s yeah um i think also the center party
01:16:03was like the
01:16:03agrarian it's like uh um centrist liberal parties belonging to the uh uh to the um
01:16:14to the alde party uh uh in in in on european level um never mind never mind
01:16:27basically there is nothing of that sort so that's no it's the state of the affairs in sweden okay
01:16:33the center party also used to have one and i mean there there used to be several more um in
01:16:39in the
01:16:40in the public field which owned media but there there was this process of uh ever increasing
01:16:46concentration of these media conglomerates so they were sold piece by piece and then just like
01:16:52okay so i would i would say let's wrap it up because we are about one hour and 30 minutes
01:16:58already and i
01:16:59don't want to make it too long for for our listeners and everyone so martin thank you very much uh
01:17:06it was
01:17:07eye-opening in many many cases and in many senses and i just i learned a lot so hopefully people
01:17:14who
01:17:15will be listening and watching as well and well kudos to you that you managed to kind of know withstand
01:17:21the crash with the trends that there are happening in our civilization and
01:17:29you know you are one of the one of the best and well enjoy it till it lasts
01:17:36well we we have to continue fighting i mean we are 74 percent now for the white color unions and
01:17:41and i think the blue color unions i feel the envy but on the other hand you have it too
01:17:45easy now with 74
01:17:47i know we at eight it's like it can go only up yeah thank you that's the only way our
01:17:55our model would
01:17:56work so yeah we're gonna have to keep up that good work thank you thank you for talking to you
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