It has been wonderful to see the support going out to the public employees’ unions in Wisconsin. The Teaparty, Governor Walker and the powers that be have seen fit to attack collective bargaining rights and have, in effect, openly declared class warfare. In this context, I found the juxtaposition of two diaries I read over the last few days quite interesting. Steven D wrote an entry last Thursday on productivity; Socialist Sweden Beats Capitalist USA. Then yesterday, Democrats Ramshield treated us with a diary called Tea Party led class warfare turns to union busting in Wisconsin. An expat’s view from Europe.
Here’s what I found intriguing:
Here’s a quote Steven used from the report of the World Economic Forum:
Sweden is the world’s second most competitive country, the World Economic Forum said in its annual ranking, hailing the Scandinavian country for its transparent institutions, efficient financial markets and the world’s strongest technological adoption.
Switzerland topped the overall ranking in The Global Competitiveness Report 2010-2011. Sweden overtook the US and Singapore this year to be placed 2nd overall.
Sweden benefits from the world’s most transparent and efficient public institutions, with very low levels of corruption and undue influence and a government that is considered to be one of the most efficient in the world, the report stated.
Steven added this comment to this:
Read that bolded sentence carefully. Most transparent and efficient public institutions. Low levels of corruption and outside influence from, oh, I don’t know, Big Oil, for example. And oh, my god Sweden has socialist health care for everyone!.
So, the Swedes achieve great productivity gains in an environment where lobbying barely exists while every citizen has top notch health care provided by the government.
How is this possible?
Maybe the answer is in Democrats Ramshield’s diary of yesterday. What struck me in his entry was this graphic:
Sweden has the highest penetration of unionization in this OECD study. And the law is not used to bust unions, it is used to boost them:
Employee participation on company boards was introduced in 1973 in
Sweden by way of legislation. Current legislation was enacted in 1988 and is a consolidation of the 1973 Acts with certain amendments.The current Act provides for minority board representation in stock companies, banks, mortgage institutions, insurance enterprises and cooperatives, provided the enterprise
has a minimum of 25 employees. In such a case the local branches of the trade unions representing the employees and which have a collective agreement relationship with the employer, have a right to appoint two board members. If the number of employees is 1000 or more, the number of board members is increased to three. Normally, the
board members are appointed by the trade union branches for workers on one side and for white-collar workers on the other. Other methods of appointing the board members
exist, such as elections.
[…]
It should be added that there are systems for employee participation on the boards of government agencies and organisations, and also for participation in municipal boards.
Source: OECD
So there we have it. A system that encourages union participation, collective bargaining, which provides healthcare for all and discourages lobbying ends up at the highest productivity level. A system based on work/life balance! Not exploitation of the weak.
Similar systems exist in the other Nordic countries and, to my knowledge in other European nations as well.
Unions=Higher Productivity=Better welfare for all
Go unions! Express your support for those in Wisconsin and everyone else about to be hit by the Teaparty Jihad.
