söndag 25 mars 2018

The gamble for Nordea is a race to the bottom

By Tor Gasslander, from Flamman 12/2018 (22 March 2018)

With the move of Nordea’s main office, Sweden is also transferring responsibility for saving the bank in the event of a crisis to Finland and the rest of the EU. Finnish leftist Li Andersson is not exactly thrilled with her big new bank.


Finland’s Prime Minister Juha Sipilä believes his country is a stable region to operate in. He was overjoyed on Twitter last Thursday evening after having won the power struggle for Nordea.

The bank advertised its move from Sweden after the Swedish Government announced a raise in resolution fees last year. On Thursday, the bank’s decision was pushed through. 96 percent of the shareholders voted for the proposal to move the bank’s head office to Finland.

The decision has given rise to harsh criticism: on the one hand, from those who believe the Government failed to hold on to one of Sweden’s most important businesses, and on the other, from those who believe that the bank, which was saved with tax revenue during the last financial crisis, is shirking its responsibility by moving as soon as there is talk of repayment.

One million Swedes could leave the bank


According to a study the research company Inizio conducted last fall, as many as one million Swedes are considering leaving the bank. The Swedish trade union federation, LO, asserted that they also were planning to move their savings from Nordea in protest.

Swedish Social-Democratic Minister for Finance Magdalena Andersson has expressed regret over Nordea’s decision to move, while Left Party leader Jonas Sjöstedt called the bank’s decision “avarice.”

Nor does the Finnish left seem happy with the move. Li Andersson, leader of the Finnish Left Alliance party, is in fact not happy at all.

Nordea, she argues, is not so much a price as a risk.

“It’s a big business, additionally in a sector where unfortunately it’s the taxpayers who bear responsibility if the risks are realized. So you could say it’s a big business that doesn’t bear its own responsibility,” she told Flamman.

And now Finland is taking over that responsibility?

“Exactly. And since Finland is part of the Eurozone, the risks are spread across the entire EU. So it’s not just Finnish taxpayers, it’s everyone else as well.”

Saving a billion euros


The Finnish Financial Supervisory Authority has increased its workforce by around 30 people to meet the increased demand for inspections that Nordea is expected to bring with it. The move is also expected to inflate the Finnish finance market to a value equivalent to 400 percent of the country’s GDP.

According to Nordea, the move will save the bank a billion euros in unpaid fees.

However, the move is not expected to result in any major changes to the Finnish labor market. Li Andersson calls it “a victory in name only.”

“During the last election season, Finland lowered its corporate taxes to 20 percent, which was below Swedish levels. It was justified entirely with the argument that it would increase our competitiveness in relation to Sweden. So it wasn’t enough to lower it to the same levels, they had to be lower. That’s how a race to the bottom starts, also between countries that should have a shared interest in maintaining a sufficient level of tax revenues to be able to fund social services,” she says.

“This is part of the problem with the world we’re now living in. Big businesses subjecting countries to competition like this, and deciding for purely political reasons where they choose to have their head office.”

Focus on the European bank union


In Nordea’s own communications about the move, focus has lately been on the European bank union, which – it is argued – provides better conditions for the bank to conduct its operations than Sweden, with its regulations.

The Swedish Government is currently also investigating conditions for a Swedish entry into the bank union. The investigation will be reported in late November, 2019. After that, there could be talk of Sweden joining.

Li Andersson thinks that is a bad idea, since Sweden would then be forced to be part of, and bear the results of, a potential new European banking crisis. Which would include the costs of a Nordea in crisis.

“Based on the information I have, I would not see it as a sensible decision. I think the likelihood of a new European bank crisis is great,” she says.

Without doubt, Finland is in a different situation than Sweden. It is the only Nordic country that has joined both the EU and the euro. The joint European finance policy they are thus part of has both created the conditions for a new crisis and weakened the possibilities of managing it, in Andersson’s opinion.

“If a new euro crisis were to break, for example, the net public debt of the euro countries is at a significantly higher level than it was previously. So there isn’t the same space for bailing out banks as there was earlier, when there was no choice.  On the whole, what we’re most worried about is this linking the fates of private banking and the states: it still exists in the euro region.”

This is the precarious situation Nordea will be moving into during the latter half of the year. Andersson would now like to see fewer discussions on exactly what position to take towards the EU in both the Nordic and the European left.

“I think there is a lot of room for collaboration among the European left where we concentrate on factual matters. We all agree on the importance of fighting climate change and a tax-haven economy, and on the importance of political collaboration on preventing businesses like Nordea pulling maneuvers like this where they subject countries to competition and play them against each other about who supports big business the most.”

måndag 5 mars 2018

Four out of ten turn down the union

By Johanna Wreder, from Arbetet 7/2018 (March 2, 2018)

The proportion of workers who are part of a union continues to decrease.

Last year, 61 percent of all workers were in a union. That is a percentage point lower than the year before.

“It’s never good when the level of organization goes down, but now it’s not due to the fact that we lost so many members, but more that the labor market is strong and many people have jobs,” says Berit Müllerström, Second Vice-President of LO, the Swedish Trade Union Confederation.

She says that last year, the LO unions had a record year, recruiting a total of 150,000 new members.

The fact that membership nevertheless fell by 6,600 is due to the fact that more people, primarily older members nearing retirement, have left the union.

LO has a long-term goal of 80 percent of workers joining the union.

That was the level LO stood at around the beginning of the 2000s, before the drastically increased membership fees in the unemployment benefit fund led to a major collapse in membership starting in 2007.

Despite membership fees being lowered again, the union has had difficulties bringing members back, says Anders Kjellberg, professor of sociology at the University of Lund, who calculated the information about the degree of organization.

“Even if the fees are lowered, people don’t automatically return. Joining a union and an unemployment benefit fund is no longer as self-evident, especially among workers,” he says.


Professional associations recovered more quickly from the membership loss, and now have a higher degree of organization than LO.

Last year, 73 percent of professionals were in a union, which was also a decrease – if only by half a percentage point.

“The good times are rolling, and more people think they’ll do all right without the union’s help,” Kjellberg says.

The share of unionized workers varies greatly among different industries.

Among workers, the union is strongest in industry, where 74 percent are members, and the weakest is the hotel and restaurant industry where 27 percent were union members last year.


The decrease in the level of organization was greatest, however, in the public sector, and there primarily among those born outside Sweden.

“There is a generational shift, where we’re getting a lot of young people, foreign-born, and newly arrived immigrants in the public sector. They may have insufficient knowledge of what a union and a collective agreement are, and don’t have the same tradition of belonging to a union,” Kjellberg says.

Despite LO being far from its goal of organizing 80 percent of workers, Berit Müllerström thinks it will work.

If it is to become reality, however, major changes are needed on the labor market, she says.

“Most of those who have permanent, full-time jobs are in the union. But a large part of the workers have uncertain temporary employment that will perhaps only last a few days into the future, and they don’t join. If we do something about that, we’ll have solved a lot,” she says.

Read Anders Kjellberg’s report (in Swedish) here.

Teachers without qualifications risk losing their union

By Tor Gasslander, from Flamman 9/2018 (March 1, 2018)

The leadership of Lärarförbundet, the Swedish Teachers’ Union, is proposing that the union stop organizing teachers without qualifications. The idea is that it will strengthen the position of teachers with qualifications. But critics argue that it will rather have the opposite effect – and that a large part of the teaching corps will thus have no possibility of organizing themselves in a specialized professional association.


“We see this as a way of bringing the Swedish Teachers’ Union into the future and of contributing to a stronger teaching profession,” Johanna Jaara Åstrand, President of the STU, said to Flamman.

In mid-January, the leadership of her union announced that they wanted to draw a clearer line between who is a teacher and who isn’t.


According to the leadership’s proposal to the union congress, which will be held in October this year, the STU thus wants to stop admitting new members who are not qualified teachers. If the proposal becomes reality, it would mean that many of those now working as teachers in the Swedish school system would be without the possibility of organizing themselves in a dedicated national trade union.

Permanently hiring teachers who do not have a license has not been permitted in the country’s schools since 2011. Owing to the extremely extensive shortage of teachers, the Government introduced a temporary relaxation of the rules in 2016, which allowed teachers without qualifications to be employed as teachers for up to three years.


More and more without qualifications


According to the latest statistics from Skolverket (the Swedish National Agency for Education), however, the proportion of teachers without qualifications in Swedish schools continues to grow. During the 2016 school year, 57 percent of new hires in the teacher corps – calculated as full-time equivalents – consisted of people without teaching licenses. Forecasts from Arbetsförmedlingen (the Swedish Public Employment Service) show no signs that the shortage of trained teachers will decrease.

According to a report from Sveriges kommuner och landsting (the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions) released last week, 187,000 new teachers will be needed by 2031. That is more that Per-Arne Andersson, the head of SALAR’s Training and Labor Market Division, estimates is possible to train – even in theory.

“Simply expanding teacher training programs isn’t realistic for solving the teacher shortage. We also need other professions in society such as nurses, engineers, doctors, social workers, and so on,” he says.

For the time being, the large group of teachers in the profession who lack licenses have the possibility of joining at least one of the industry’s two trade unions. Lärarnas Riksförbund, the National Union of Teachers in Sweden, only organizes trained teachers, but the STU has up until now also stood open for untrained teachers. They also organize preschool teachers, principals, and career advisers. The NUT has sometimes joked that the STU takes “anyone at all.”


Several sources in the STU have now told Flamman that there is widespread dissatisfaction with the proposal to stop organizing teachers without qualifications. Beyond some members feeling the proposal is simply devoid of any solidarity, many are also arguing that it will lead to fewer members over the short term at the same time as they are losing one of the most important recruitment arguments in relation to the NUT.

On Thursday [March 8], the STU’s important Gothenburg district is expected to take a decision on a motion to counter the proposal.

“If we are to succeed with our union commitments, if we are to succeed in getting a better work environment and higher salaries, we need to stand together, united. If we exclude a group and leave them to worse conditions and lower salaries, that also affects us,” wrote the 27 members behind the motion.


Second-class teachers


Ludvig Fahlvik is a teaching student, and has worked as a substitute teacher during his education. He thus belongs to the thousands of teachers who are so far not technically authorized to teach. Today, Ludvig is a member in both trade unions as a student. According to the STU’s new proposal, students will also be able to be members in future.

Ludvig is convinced, however, that the proposal will create some kind of second-class teacher.

“The salary structure will be affected, people have to realize that. If teachers without qualifications can’t take part in the union’s successes, it will affect the whole occupational group. Over the long run, it will pay off to hire teachers without qualifications before teachers with them,” he said to Flamman.

Another member with good insight into the organization of the STU says that, moreover, the choice is untactical.

“All this about creating a professional union is probably people thinking it’s easier to push issues about improving schools rather than work environment issues, for example – it’s a lot more difficult to get a hearing there. But I think this is enormously untactical, since we’re undermining our own strength as a union,” said the member, who wished to remain anonymous.


Unite the profession


But STU President Johanna Jaara Åstrand doesn’t agree.

“We see the opposite; we have always organized ourselves based on a fundamental idea: that we want to unite the entire profession into one organization. The proposal we’re putting forth now is to be clearer about who is included in the teaching profession. We see it as a way of strengthening our identity,” she said to Flamman.

“It’s a question of being clear about what is actually required to carry out satisfactory teaching work. A part of that requirement is that teachers who have not completed their training won’t have as good conditions as those who are trained.

“We have rules that say that as an untrained teacher, you can’t be permanently employed – that you remain in short temporary jobs and draw the short straw if a trained teacher applies for the job. That’s how we want it to be, and so we also want to be honest with who we’re organizing,” she says.


Facts:


Sweden has two unions that organize teachers: The National Union of Teachers in Sweden and the Swedish Union of Teachers.

Both unions sign joint central collective agreements through a cooperative organization, Lärarnas Samverkansråd (the Teachers’ Cooperative Council). Both unions are also agree on the principle of not recruiting members directly from each other.

The NUT organizes teachers with qualifications and study and career advisers, and has 90,000 members.

The STU organizes, for example, preschool teachers, recreation instructors, elementary school teachers, high school teachers, study and career advisers, teachers in music and cultural schools, and principals, and has 230,000 members. Teachers without qualifications constitute a minority of the union.

Source: Lärarnas Riksförbund and Lärarförbundet

Up through 2027, the number of children and students of preschool, elementary school, and high school age will increase by nearly 350,000, which is equivalent to an increase of around 15 percent compared with 2017.

In the next few years along, over 600 new preschools and 300 new schools will need to be built in Sweden to hold them all.

Up through 2031, the total recruitment need for teachers will be 187,000 full-time equivalents. The need is greatest over the next five years, as it is estimated that preschools and schools will recruit the equivalent of 77,000 full-time teachers.

Nearly one fourth of all students in high school career programs today are beginning teacher training. To meet these needs, the figure would need to be significantly higher. In addition, the shortage of labor power will increase in many professions over the next ten years.

More and more teachers are returning to the profession. Last year the figure increased 40 percent – that is, 3,100 teachers who went back to school.

Since 2011, Swedish municipalities have invested SEK 15 billion (USD 1.8 billion) in teacher’s salaries above the levels of the industrial agreement, which serves as the benchmark for the entire labor market, and above state salary investments for the same period.

Source: Sveriges kommuner och landsting


söndag 4 februari 2018

Organize or lose

By Anna Herdy, from Flamman 5/2018 (February 1, 2018)

The deep rift between the leadership of the Social Democratic Party and left socialists of various red hues has seldom been seen so clearly as when the party presented its election plan, and the think tank Katalys presented its major project on class. Editor-in-chief Anna Herdy predicts a bright future for the broader left – in the workers’ movement 2.0.

It’s almost a little ironic. Two important institutions in the workers’ movement wrote two different stories within a day of each other. On the one hand, the trade-union think tank Katalys launched the important project Klass i Sverige (Class in Sweden) which, under the leadership of sociology professor Göran Therborn, is an attempt to chisel out a new class analysis, and through the initiative of Daniel Suhonen, head of Katalys, to put issues of class on the political agenda. On the other, Social Democratic Party Secretary-General Lena Rådström Baastad and election manager John Zanchi presented what would be the Social Democrats’ election plan – one that has completely abandoned the wage earners’ perspective and the social portion of its own movement.

Katalys and the Social Democratic leadership are thus reading reality in two completely different ways, laying bare the now enormous rift between a socialist left and the leadership of the Social Democratic Party. This election year, the think tank will above all try to highlight class conflicts on the Swedish labor market, talk about the living conditions of the working class as a consequence of the constantly increasing clefts, and look for (and, it is hoped, find) the issues that will mobilize the working class to vote for equality and justice in the election this fall. The Social Democratic leadership, on the other hand, that they are “confident in the idea that we are in a position where we can continue to govern after the election” (Expressen, January 30, 2018). Quite clearly. The plan is to win 700,000 “changeable votes” over to “their” side of the bloc border – 300,000 of them from the far-right Sweden Democrats (SvenskaDagbladet, January 30, 2018).

They will do this primarily by talking about what their party’s own surveys show voters are most interested in right now: namely, crime but also “jobs”, healthcare, integration, troubles in the suburbs and gang criminality. That is, more of the same fluffy signal words about order in State finances, “better” welfare, “faster” integration and “everyone who can work, will.” These are not insignificant questions – but the party has already shown that they do not intend to fill them with any content worthy of a workers’ party.

The criticism was not long in coming. Tobias Baudin, President of Kommunal (the Swedish Municipal Workers’ Union), said that the Social Democrats had forgotten welfare workers; Daniel Suhonen, head of the think tank Katalys, said the election plan was a “plan for losers.”

The fact that this conflict exists inside the Social Democratic Party is a positive development for the party leadership. When internal conflicts can be shown openly (regardless of whether they concern nuclear agreements, the right to strike, or the election plan) it strengthens the image of a broad social-democratic party where it appears that debate is lively and everyone has a place – or that the left of the party is being kept in check, depending on who you ask. But this liveliness of debate is only a mirage. What used to be the political subject of social democracy – the working class – is now gone and has not appeared in communications or the creation of public opinion in many years. The Party leadership has abandoned its inheritance and its most loyal electoral base, which is why the LO (Swedish Trade Union Confederation) collective is losing votes to the Sweden Democrats. Katalys, which describes the problems of social democracy clearly in its latest report, wants to mould public opinion in relation to the Social Democratic Party, but there is a drawback: the Social Democratic Party doesn’t want to listen. Instead, they show – with all the clarity that could be desired – that there is an imaginary middle they now believe remains.

In an interview in this week’s number of Flamman, sociology professor Göran Therborn presents the interesting idea of an extraparliamentary left movement that places demands on the Social Democratic Party, the Left Party, and the Green Party, and how he hopes the Klass i Sverige project can contribute to that. It is an uplifting thought, because what’s needed is not just mobilizing the working class to the polls, but a working class organizing itself in a movement that is able to change the premises of the political debate – and above all, political reality. The Social Democratic Party has left its core voters without a social context, and are no longer interested in organizing the working class within itself. To be honest, the Left party is not (yet) terribly good at that. Even if the membership is the largest since the 1980s, the party does not yet constitute a first choice for the working class. Instead of talking generally about crime, unemployment and integration, the left socialist alternative must recognize and meet the class conflicts on every given occasion. It must see people who are afraid that their children will become gang members, improve security on the labor market, and reckon with a pension system that mires people in poverty.

Don’t get me wrong: the point is not to say “working class” as many times as possible. The point is to build something for the working class to believe in. To make the conditions of the working class the center of political debate.