Browsing by Author "Hamark, Jesper"

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Industrial wages in mid-1880s Sweden: estimations beyond Bagge’s Wages in Sweden. Data, source and methods
(2019-09) Hamark, Jesper; Collin, Kristoffer
Most researchers interested in Swedish wages during early industrialization have used the seminal work Wages in Sweden from the 1930s as their point of departure. Whereas the material in Wages in Sweden solidly tracks the movements of wages, it is not suitable for comparisons across industries or counties at a specific point in time. Nor should Wages in Sweden be used to estimate wages in absolute levels. Based on hitherto-unused source material from a large, nationwide public inquiry, we estimate industrial wages in the mid-1880s. The population consists of industrial workers with different experience, skills and firm attachment. Our estimations include a national wage as well as inter-industry and inter-regional wages in both absolute and relative terms, weighted by employment. The findings call for a substantial revision of relative wages across industries. They also indicate that the wage dispersion across industries and counties was lower than previously thought. We estimate the national wage for women as being half the size of that of men.
Labour market conflicts in Scandinavia, c. 1900–1938: The scientific need to separate strikes and lockouts
(2020-02) Hamark, Jesper
Research on labour markets conflicts has come a long way. Today we know that conflicts vary over business cycles and with the design of labour market institutions; they tend to cluster around wars and return in longer waves; certain branches are affected by conflicts more than others, and conflicts in the last couple of decades have been feminised and tertiarised. Yet we could do better. With few exceptions quantitative studies are about conflicts, that is, strikes and lockouts in amalgamation. Analytically separating strikes and lockouts has the potential of shedding new light on several debates of historical and theoretical importance. While the distinction between the two types of conflicts has general implications, in this paper I make specific references to the three Scandinavian countries, namely Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Employers and employees struggle over influence and division of income. Occasionally the two parties use, or threaten to use, their respective tools: the lockout and the strike. The day the scientific community decides to treat employers and employees as a single entity, we should also do the same with lockouts and strikes. But not before.
Ports, dock workers and labour market conflicts
(2014-12-02) Hamark, Jesper
ABSTRACT Ports, dock workers and labour market conflicts Gothenburg Studies in Economic History 12 (2014) ISBN : 978-91-86217-11-2 http://hdl.handle.net/2077/37421 Author: Jesper Hamark Doctoral Dissertation in Economic History at the Department of Economy and Society, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, P.O. Box 625, SE-405 30 Gothenburg, Sweden. (Written in English.) Distribution: Department of Economy and Society (address as above). This dissertation consists of an introduction and four research papers that connect with two broad research fields: economic growth and labour market conflicts. In the introduction I provide a theoretical framework and I elaborate on the methods and material used in the papers. In Paper 1, I investigate the topic of inter-industry propensity to strike. Earlier research has suggested that some groups of workers have struck more than others. One such group is dock workers—known within labour history and industrial relations for their militancy across time and space. But as shown in the paper, there is no empirical evidence for the particular strike-proneness of dockers up to WWII . Port strikes seem to have been not so much a quantitative as a qualitative phenomenon: the position of dockers in the distribution chain gave them the potential to disrupt society to a degree far exceeding most other occupational groups. In Paper 2, co-author Christer Thörnqvist and I study the 1909 Swedish General Strike. The strike was not powerful enough, and the trade unions and the Swedish Trade Union Confederation, LO, met a crushing defeat. Our focus is the functioning of the transportation system—and the ports in particular—an aspect of vital outcome for the strike, but one which is underdeveloped in previous research. We make the argument that LO did little or nothing to support the strikers in the ports, and that export could continue with the assistance of strikebreakers. One of the factors explaining LO’s disinterest in port affairs was its overall strategy to respect the laws of the state; at the time it was a crime to even try to force someone to strike, or in any way prevent someone from working. In Paper 3, I examine technology and productivity in the pre-container Port of Gothenburg. I argue that technological change was gradual for a long period of time and that the forklift and pallet—adopted in the late 1940s—were responsible for setting off a series of changes. The productivity figures I present strongly indicate growth up to WWII —an empirical finding that contrasts with results from other ports. In the postwar years productivity continued to grow, but at a faster rate compared to the prewar years. The pattern of productivity offers tentative support for the contention that the impact of the forklift was revolutionary. In Paper 4, I discuss the transformation of the Swedish labour market in the first half of the twentieth century: from high to low levels of conflict activity. I critically evaluate the power resources hypothesis, saying that the seizing of governmental power by social democrats in the 1930s gave the working class opportunity to shift focus: from costly strikes within the industrial sphere to less costly redistributive policies within the political sphere. As an alternative explanation I emphasize intra-labour tensions. Communism, syndicalism and social democracy showed diverse attitudes towards industrial militancy, and the relative strength of the three ideologies affected conflict activity accordingly.
Unions, insurance and changing welfare states: The emergence of obligatory complementary income insurance in Sweden
(2022-01) Hamark, Jesper; Lapidus, John
Why do unions that support comprehensive public unemployment insurance introduce the private alternative known as obligatory complementary income insurance (OCII)? In this article, we seek answers to how Swedish unions have thought and argued on OCII, how these thoughts and arguments change over time and whether there are differences across unions within the same confederation and across different confederations. The material includes congressional minutes and other internal documents as well as newspapers and union magazines, 2000–2020. We find a myriad of arguments for and against OCII. Many unions highlight the eroded public unemployment insurance as the prime trigger of OCII. Yet, for unions with high rates of unemployment, the OCII premium may be too expensive to handle. Further, some unions argue that high-wage members are subsidised by low-wage members: OCII only benefit those who earn above the ceiling in the public unemployment insurance. We also find that OCII enhances sharp competition between unions in order to keep and recruit new members. Higher ceiling in public unemployment insurance makes OCII useless for many union members, and thus less valuable as a tool for recruitment. To avoid member flight, therefore, there is an incentive for unions to downplay the need to restore public unemployment insurance compatible with a universal welfare model.
Wage distribution within the Swedish State Railways, 1877–1951: Material and methods.
(2021-06) Hamark, Jesper; Turner, Russell
For nine decades, the Swedish State Railways (SJ) produced wage records containing all its permanent employees. SJ employed more people than any private employer in Sweden, and the records contain individual-level information across hundreds of occupations: full name, yearly wage, occupational status, year and date of birth, occupational status, time of employment at SJ, etc. This paper serves as a background to a project on wage distribution within SJ, with the aim of tracking the development of, on the one hand, occupational or class-based wage inequality and, on the other, gender-based wage inequality. In this paper, we present the source material in detail, discuss its strengths and weaknesses, and describe the methods used to develop and process the wage records into data. Special attention is given to the adoption and application of HISCLASS, the historical, international social class scheme.