An article from 1995 describing internal conflict and budget issues in the SAC, a Swedish syndicalist union.
The following article was originally published in the newspaper Arbetaren, March 1995. We have translated it from SAC's internal bulletin number 4-1995 (now called Syndikalisten, the same name as the paper of the Norsk Syndikistisk Forbund) After this was written, about 2000 workers of the SAC have left the Organisation.
The SAC is now being shaken by the most serious internal conficts since the end of the 1920's. Two local branches (LS) have already decided to leave the Organisation: Six branches have decided to withold dues to the central Organisation until the Central Committee calls a new Congress and suspends the increase of dues. In another ten, or so branches the members are now voting over what their position will be.
The reasons for the crisis can be traced a long way back. There has for a long time been discontent in many branches over the cost of the central activity. After the 1987 Congress decided to raise dues, a number of smaller branches either left the organisation or were expelled. Among these were Ludvika Farila, and Torsby. These have organised themselves in the "Fri Facklig Samarbetsorganisasjon.(FFS).
The economy of the SAC has lately become even worse. One thing is that the number of members paying dues has been somewhat reduced,another thing is that the dues have been little increased, and not altered from 1990 to 1995.
The SAC's newspaper Arbetaren is nmning at a loss which has made the situation worse. For a long time these losses-in the later years between two and three million Swedish crowns per year have been covered by the profits of the (SAC owned) printing house Tryckeri AB Federativs. This printing house, the publishers Federativs and SAC property Sveavagen 98 in Stockholm have been orgamsed as one cornpany. The printing house and the property have traditionally run at a profit, while the newspaper and the publishers have run at a loss. The system has been a means of securing SAC's ability to both publish newspapers and books.
However, Federativs printers have during the last few years run at a loss, and later broke even, with the result that the economy has landed in trouble. The SAC has been forced to contribute money. 1994 ended with a profit of 800 000 crowns for the printers, while the budgeted profit for 1995 is over a million. However, these results are still not good enough to cover the loss in the newspaper.
SAC's Congress in 1994 decided by a big majority to to publish the newspaper in spite of the cost. The same Congress decided to reduce the number of full time district officials (ombudsman) from ten to "at least seven", the question to be investigated in the course of the autumn.
These officals are employed on five-year contracts. Three of these expired during 1994. The Executive Committee (AU) after consulting the officials, to extend these contracts until it had been decided how many district officials there would be in the future. As time passed and nothing was decided during the autumn, the contracts were extended to 28th February 1995. Questions were being asked in many of the branches and districts concerned on what was really going on- there had never been any consultations between the districts and the SAC centrally on the question of the full-time officials.
The Congress decision necessitated an increase of dues, but to consolidate this, it was not voted at the Congress, but at a general ballot among the membership in the autumn. By an extremely narrow margin, the ballot decided to increase the dues by 40 crowns for full-paying members. The ballot led to sharp reactions, 19 branches demanding in December a new ballot. The demand was for the postponement of the mcrease of the dues until a National Conference on the economy of the SAC was held. The Central Committee discussed the demand at a meeting in the middle of January, and decided to prepare a National Conference. It decided not to freeze the dues increase ,but to take out only 20 crowns from January 1996 and another 10 from January 1997. The Central Committee decided to inform the critical branches of these compromise decisions, and to hold a referendum quickly if they were dissatisfied.
The committee decided also to assist the SAC press with one million to the magazine Syndikalisten (SAC's internal bulletin) and one million to the newspaper, contributions which implied that both would have to cut their costs. A further half million is budgeted, but to be paid only on specified application. The committee decided lastly that the number of the district officials should be 8,5. Until the members could vote over who should have the appointments, the jobs would be offered the former officials, but on short-term contracts.
However, the decisions of the Central Committee did not satisfy those who had been discontented. Active members from about 20 branches (LS) assembled on the 10th-11th February at a conference in Grangesberg. They found that the earlier demand for a referendum was not good enough. The majority of those present supported the demand that the Central Committee should summon an Extra Congress. The dues and the present number of officials should be frozen until the congress be held. They demanded also that the economical decisions of the former congress- including support to the newspaper- be frozen. The majority recommended also the branches to withold their dues to the SAC until the Central Committee accepted its demands.
After the conference in Grangesberg, several branches have voted over its recommendations. Sundsvall and Ramsele branches have decided to leave the SAC. Vaxjo, Stensele, Eslov, Helsmgborg, Snapphanebygden and presumably Lund branches have decided to withhold affiliation dues. Eskilstuna branch supports the Grangesberg demands, but will pay its dues. Sveg and Bollnas branches declared that they will for the time being accept the decision of the Central Committee meeting in January. Ballots are still taking place in several other branches, including Alvdalen.
Jonas Fogelqvist,
For the Swedish Workers Centre
From Syndikalisten 7/8-1995
SAC internal Bulletin
Taken from flag.blackened.net
Can comment on articles and discussions
Comments
I wonder what became of those who left? Quite a few years back, I thought I heard they were still functioning as their own union.
Anyone know what ever became of these ex-SAC members?
There has been a number of splits from the SAC during the last 25 years. In most cases, each local that left has continued as their own separate union. A few years ago I think there was about 10 of these miniature unions.
If you're really interested, I can dig up some more information about them.
I'm definately interested.
2000 is a lot of membership loss in a union that
continues to loose members (due to loss of traditional sectors, splits and general attrition),
Has the 2000 members reconsituted themselves a some form of union with Ombudsman and more traditional trade union features?
Most of the locals that left SAC has kept going, and they do have ombudsmen, negotiate with employers, etc. They are grouped into several different umbrella organisations, and some are also completely independent.
I think some of them are actually doing fairly well, and have increased their membership since they left SAC. Most of them seem very apolitical and very "service union" oriented.
Here is the website for one of them: http://www.alvdalensfackforening.se/
The ad on the left promises "Good service, no queues, no waiting time. Competent ombudsman."
Even worse is Tingvalla Bro Fackförening which has a website at www.tingvallabro.se
If you scroll down you can find an announcement of their latest contract which reads:
My Swedish is pretty crappy, but I thought that's what they were saying. Seems to me they are "stuck" in 1950s SAC ways. A carry over of SAC's forray into more mainstream unionism and reformism.
Really seems like "company unionism"... I wonder what their reputation amongst workers are like? I mean, are they viewed in the construction trades as being more like a company union then a workers union?
Felix, maybe for those who don't know Swedish geography,perhaps it might be interesting to describe where in Sweden these unions are mainly located (like small towns, smaller cities, semi-rural areas and so forth). It always seemed to me that the less radical syndicalists were in smaller areas. And that the woodworkers federation was a sorta father-to-son union, with a heavy reliance on Ombudsman.
Felix do you have any idea where things are at now? There was an excellent blog a few years back ( http://swedishzine.wordpress.com/) about the SAC, motarbetaren, and swedish autonomism, but no updates in a long time. I got thr impressionnthat the younger generationnin SAC wants to take it in a much more radical direction, get rid of the ombudsmen, etc. Where does this all stand now'
Thanks for the additional information Felix, very informative
I can't really say what your average construction worker thinks of them, but I think they are viewed as a company union by SAC members. I have also read stories about bosses recommending their workers to join the TBF union instead of the LO affiliated one.
Yeah, the locals that split from SAC in the 80s and 90s was mainly in small towns and rural areas, and they probably had a quite different composition than the locals in more urban areas.
I'm not following SAC all that closely at the moment, so I can't tell you too much about what's going on right now. Generally I think there has been a very good development in the last decade. While I think the overall membership number has continued to decline, they are much more involved in workplace struggles today, and use more militant tactics. They also replaced their ombudsmen with a smaller number of paid organisers some years ago.
The turn to more militant tactics and the shake up of the central administration did meet resistance, and this led to a new round of splits and expulsions around five years ago. This all kicked off when a couple of paid officers were fired and then proceeded to sue the union for breach of employment law. The new group of ex-SAC locals are grouped into the "Network of Free Syndicalists".
I think those branches who left, primarily in building construction, asked to join the IWW in 1999. Some of the IWWs pro-SAC anarcho-syndicalists scuttled that potential asap.
The way you say it, you make it sound like there was a secret group of anarchosyndicalists who manipulated to prevent it from happening. Maybe, I wasn't around then, so I wouldn't know.
But if that is the case, it's quite sad, as anyone with any grasp.on.common sense and basic principles of revolutionary unionism would have fought tooth and nail to keep that from.happening.
No secret group. But especially back then, then were many folks in the IWW who were more dedicated to their personal political positions than openly building the IWW. They basically raised a fuss about the IWW "raiding" our "sister" unions and killed off any desire to even investigate the possibilities. The SAC was also wealthy at the time and various groupings within the IWW wanted to mooch grants off them.
The SAC asked the IWW's board what was up, and we simply said they approached us and we felt they deserved to be investigated fairly. We weren't trying to fish in troubled waters was the truth. The SAC seemed OK with our response.
The irony being that the IWW had a Scandinavian Administration from the 1920s to the 1980s, with a largish branch in the ship yards of Malmo, Sweden. So most of the history of both the SAC and the IWW we had amicable relations even as "competing" dual unions. The only problem was in the heads of North American anarcho-syndicalists operating in the IWW.
Seems sensible imo. I don't like the idea of getting into European splits and disagreements as an organization at all. I also wouldn't like Europeans joining the IWW as some sort of payback towards another revolutionary union.
To me it seems perfectly normal and healthy to be more dedicated to what you call "personal political positions" than to viewing organization building as the most important goal. When it's in reverse, the result is sectarianism and opportunism and the organization you end up with ain't all that inspiring.
It also ties into something that I want to call "Dungeons and Dragons anarcho-syndicalism", which I think we all engage with at some point (not just in the IWW). It hit me when a friend made a meme about roleplayers that said "We killed a dragon using only our minds!"
We know that the working class is international, and we flatter ourselves into thinking that this means that our organization is the one that has to bring the gospel to the rest of them, or as the joke about Southern Baptists changing light bulbs goes, we only have to hold up the light and the world will revolve around it.
One of the results of this is the delusion that is not usually explicitly expressed but which I think is visible, that a small mostly-american organization has worked it all out, and that millions of Bangladeshi or Chinese workers just need to declare themselves part of our organization to solve their problems.
Another is the recurring idea that the simple planting of flags in new territories, in and of itself, has one iota of positive effect on the class struggle. It doesn't. If all we care about is getting another franchise and becoming one step cloaer to being a "real" international, and the process of international growth is not accompanied by internal growth and maturation, then it's just make-believe. Maybe we get lucky and the new group is decent, and they go on being so; or maybe the new group are disgruntled ex-members of a larger organization and only want to use our name to legitimize themselves in ongiong disputes. This might be a split in the right direction or maybe not, but its still worth checking out to see why, and to make sure that the group has another activoty besides just attacking their former comrades.
The end result is basically where the trotskyists have ended up, where each is competing for 5 or 6 person groupuscules in each country ewith the roght political line. Especially with that Ukrainian group a few years ago that was taking money from all of their "internationals".
Edited: the last paragraph was kind of messy, I cleaned it up a bit.
I didn't know about the 1999 approach to the IWW. Learn something new every day.
Three things stand out here. If those who left the SAC were pretty conservative unionists, why would the IWW even want to have them? By conservative, I mean even by revolutionary unionist (IWW) standards.
The IWW has always maintained sisterly ties with the SAC. This obviously posed a "fraternal" problem(sorry, can't think of another term). Is the sum gain of members worth the breaking of historical relations?
Lastly, I was reading and "OBU" magazine on Libcom (in the Library, from 1919,Pg. 51:
http://libcom.org/library/one-big-union-monthly-august-1920) where the IWW would not iussue any sort of industrial union charters to the Swedes. The IWW General Admin. stated that they would allow for an Swedish Admin., but the SAC, as a union, already embodied IWW type principles.
No doubt the IWW has had bunches of members in Sweden (alot simply having to do with the immigration of lots of Swedes to the US, with lots of Swedes in the IWW).
And Brill and I can recall in the 1970s an active IWW BRanch in Malmo shipyards. [Sidebar - Brill, I just remember some of the articles in the IW at the time, you recall particulars of Benny Lund and crew?]
I've never been big on the IWW trying to organize where IWA and other syndicalist section's already exist. And I've never been big on European anarcho-syndicalists trying to import their views and their forms on other situations. Obviously a bigger and different discussion.
Seconded. Good discussion overall.
The idea that an organization has territorial jurisdiction makes no sense to me. "We're the Swedish group, everyone has to be with us." Why? I wouldn't be threatened if an IWA or other group started organizing a union in the US. I think people have a right to affiliate to/with whoever they want to, if they believe in the principles of the group they're affiliating with and have relationships with those people, and I think we should trust the sincerity of people who approach an organization. (There of course can and should be disciplinary measures for when parts of a group act in fucked up ways, but presuming from the outset that people in an area will act in fucked up ways because they don't want to be in this group instead of that one, that doesn't make sense to me.) I don't think that other groups should be seen as competitors, either, but if groups do see it as a competition I think the idea of responding to that competition by preventing competitors from existing at all strikes me as a little weird. "You should be in the SAC and not the IWW." "Why?" "Because the SAC is your only option." That's hardly a position on the merits of the SAC. And if we think the emancipation of the working class is the action of the workers themselves then why limit their organizational options and expression?
I say this not because I want the IWW to operate in other places, BTW. If an IWW group popped up in Sweden I'd be pleased to greet them but I don't have an IWW expansionist view and I don't see why people in Sweden would want to be in the IWW instead of the SAC. But if people did want that, I think jurisdiction talk is a silly way to respond to that.
yeah agree with nate. it is like saying that no one should join solfed because the IWW or afed are bigger. lulz. it is great to try to have more united organizations, and i certainly work towards such. but if people want to try out different strategies or have their own affiliations so be it. revolutionary pluralism.