3. Sweden in the inter-war period: Economy and society
3.3 The rationalization movement
Throughout history, man has tried to find ways to make production more efficient by making the most of raw material and labour. During the Second Industrial Revolution these efforts became more systematic and came to affect
6 Schön 2007, pp 349-354.
7 Magnusson 1996, pp 370-374.
8 Östlund 2003; Carlson 2003; Ibsen 1995.
9 See for example Svensson 1983, pp 80-87, Magnusson 1987, pp 223-244.
10 Björck 2002.
all aspects of society. The rationalization movement had a technical side as well as an organizational side. Both demand and supply side factors affected technological development in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century;
demand for labour-saving machines increased as real wages rose and key innovations opened up many opportunities to rationalize production. An important aspect in this regard was the replacement of steam power with electricity. Electricity and combustion engines made it possible to connect each machine to a separate power source.11 This saved space, improved flexibility and made production less vulnerable to power cuts. As a consequence of this development the demand for technicians and engineers increased.12
In organizational terms, rationalization meant concentration, standardization and increased division of labour. Big factories, producing long runs of standardized products, replaced small workshops with customized production and the control over production was also concentrated. This development was, for example, seen in industries producing matches, rubber, sugar, beer and tobacco. It was not considered as a threat by contemporary observers. On the contrary, many argued that the concentration process was positive and facilitated rationalization.13
As with other aspects of rationalization, division of labour was not a new phenomenon; the new thing in the early nineteenth century was a more pronounced division of labour between blue-collars and white-collars. This development is often associated with the American engineer and management consultant Frederick W Taylor, who advocated increased division of labour and separation of the planning and performance of work tasks. Taylor’s ideas of Scientific Management were introduced in Sweden in the early twentieth century and were widely discussed among engineers and business leaders as well as in the labour movement.14 By the mid-1920s about 40 percent of the workers in the metal engineering industry were employed in firms that had implemented time studies, and in 1940 the equivalent share was close to 80 percent.15 A factor of importance in this context was certainly the shortening of the working week to 48 hours in 1920.16 As the reduction of the working week assumed constant wages, it was necessary to increase efficiency, which was
11 Schön 2007a, p 313.
12 Berner 1981, p 135.
13 af Trolle 1965, p 97.
14 Berner 1981, chapter 10; de Geer 1978.
15 Lundh 2002, pp 149-151.
16 Isidorsson 2001.
partly accomplished by making the demarcation between work and leisure stricter, and partly by increasing work intensity.
Initially, the Swedish labour movement did not endorse rationalization.17 Some union representatives feared that increased efficiency would lead to unemployment. Other arguments were that time studies and performance-based wages could weaken worker-solidarity and that work itself would be degraded.
It seems like most of the criticism concerned Scientific Management. Few union representatives gave voice to hostility towards technological change as such. In a journal interview from 1911, the LO chairman even accused Swedish employers of not making enough investments in modern technology.18 A contemporary investigation from the same phase showed that Swedish workers had developed a wide variety of strategies for restricting output and resisting rationalization,19 but these strategies seldom involved obstructing or refusing to work with new machinery.20
Except for a temporary backlash during the Great Depression, the labour movement’s attitude towards rationalization, including Taylor’s programme, became increasingly positive over time.21 In the light of the eight-hour day and the post-war depression, influential trade unionists began to see the benefits of having production organized more efficiently, since it was expected to result in growth and improved living standards. Probably, this changed view was also related to increased centralization of the trade union movement and to the strengthened position of the Social Democratic Party. The endorsement of
17 Johansson 1989, pp 43-45.
18 See Johansson 1989, p 37.
19 See Johansson 1989, pp 39-40.
20 The study of workers in the printing industry by Lars Ekdahl provides an illustration of this point.
Although the printing workers were initially hostile towards new technology, their union eventually adopted a more pragmatic view. Instead of stopping technological change, the union tried to slow down and shape the development so that skilled workers were not replaced by unskilled ones. Thus, quite detailed demands about manning and the use of apprentices were made in wage negotiations.
Ekdahl 1983, pp 152, 166-169. See also Olsson 1986, p 155.
21 Uhlén 1928; Johansson 1989, pp 47-52, 54, 56; Hjalmarsson 1991, p 254. There were certainly opposite tendencies as well, particularly among the radicals elements of the labour movement.
Wallentin 1978, p 50; Andréasson 2008, p 175. There was also a growing distrust towards mechanization in the late 1920s in the movement of unemployed. A local branch of this movement, for example, proposed that an unemployment insurance could be financed by a tax on machines.
However, in practice the organizations of the unemployed mainly opposed the public unemployment policy. Andréasson 2008, pp 173-176.
technical and organizational changes is often seen as a precondition for the spirit of mutual understanding between the Swedish labour market parties in the 1930s.