Article

2010-05-09 Europe

Sweden: Left Party retains call for six-hour workday

The Left Party's governing board was forced into a climbdown on Saturday morning as delegates at the party's annual congress voted to continue pushing for a six-hour workday.

The vote, 121-91 in favour, means the party's elections manifesto will include calls for the introduction in Sweden of a six-hour workday with no loss of salary.

Leading figures had wanted to ditch the six-hour policy at the party's annual congress in Gävle. They hoped instead to focus on policies they felt stood a greater chance of gaining acceptance as part of the three-party Red-Green opposition's common electoral goals.

Demands viewed by the party's upper echelons as more realistic included: the right to full-time work; greater employment security; and the introduction of individualized parental leave, a system whereby mothers or fathers would be allocated days individually without the right to transfer them to the other parent.

But delegates proved unwilling to shed one of the party's high profile issues, meaning a paragraph calling for the introduction of the six-hour workday will now form part of the Left Party's official election manifesto.

Josefin Brink, a member of the governing board, had called for the demand to be set aside ahead of the forthcoming election. "We're going to continue pushing for a six-hour workday but it's not an issue that can be accomplished over the coming years. Our election manifesto should prioritize matters of strategic importance that can be accomplished in the near future," she said.

But many party delegates disagreed with the call from on high. "A six-hour workday with full salary retention ought to be one of the Left Party's major profile issues. We know it's right, and it's smart. We need to have faith in ourselves," said Skåne delegate Ana Rubin. Stockholm delegate Emil Magnusson said it would be catastrophic for the party to leave out one of the issues for which it is most famous. "When should we push the issue if not at election time?" he wondered.

Oh yes, do push it. Crystallize the differences between you and the party that ends up running the country for the next generation, even if you do win enough votes in this particular election.

Posted by Fred 2010-05-09 00:00|| || Front Page|| [5 views ] Top

#1 This is insane. If you want to make workers lives easier you are better off pushing for a 4 day work week instead. At least then you can help with traffic congestion and pollution and time wasted driving back and forth. Heck some businesses could shut down and save power for a day. But 6 hour days does nothing but make your economy less competitive.

You could also have all of these benefits with a 10 hour day four day workweek which is difficult for unions to accept but would be preferred by the vast majority of workers in my opinion.

Posted by rjschwarz 2010-05-09 10:40|| 2010-05-09 10:40|| Front Page Top

#2 G hour work day. 2 hours less per day.

How will that work in Hospitals? They simply ignore the patients 2 hours out of each shift, 6 hours out of 24? Nurses and doctors and other medical staff cannot be made to appear out of thin air to make up the shortage.

Assume they are trying to be "fair" as all good leftists are, so do they then raise the salary of those who have to work 8 hours instead of 6, by 25%? SO base costs for all medical care go up by 25%, which hits across society pretty hard, and causes the state (state run medical care there) to have to tax everyone even MORE or else curtail services.

What is the matter with these people? They are using "magical thinking" at the level of a 3 year old. Are Swedes that stupid? Or is it just leftists who think that business capital, money, doctors, nurses etc will all magically appear at the command of government bureaucrats, just because they say so? Where do they think it comes from, elves under a magic tree?

Posted by OldSpook 2010-05-09 11:50|| 2010-05-09 11:50|| Front Page Top

#3 Decadence defined.

A civilization that is so blind to the causes of its decline that, confronted with crisis, it cannot think of any path other than the one that accelerates that decline.

We are heading into an Age of Oligarchy in which a rootless international class of moneyfiddlers, owners of scarce real assets and a handful of technology oligopolists will dictate terms to the societies they dominate. For a glimpse of the future, look at the societies that have produced, respectively, the world's richest man (Slim, in oligarchic Mexico) and the world's richest political bandit (Putin, in oligarchic Russia).

Oligarchs, unite! Nothing to lose but your shame.

Posted by lex 2010-05-09 12:07|| 2010-05-09 12:07|| Front Page Top

#4 This just extends the current shell game re: jobs in Sweden. Along with Norway, it has a very high incidence of people on sick leave at any given time, many of whom are not actually ill. They staff on the assumption that the number of people actually at work is rather lower than the official staff level. It's tolerated because it's a way to keep employment stats high and official unemployment levels low.

Posted by lotp 2010-05-09 15:00|| 2010-05-09 15:00|| Front Page Top

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