BY CATHARINA TIRSÉN
STOCKHOLM, Sweden - "We could have stayed out for weeks
longer," said one of the bus drivers hurrying in to work at
the Hornsberg depot in Stockholm March 12.
Late on March 9 the Municipal Workers Union and the bus companies signed a new two-year contract giving a wage raise similar to other national contracts in Sweden. The strike was then called off. By the morning of March 10 most buses were running again.
Margareta Klang at the Marsta bus depot north of Stockholm has been a bus driver for 18 years. "What's most important for me is the schedule, that we get rid of the stress and get regular breaks," she said while picketing on March 5.
Since 1993 local governments have contracted out public transport to private bus companies, who underbid each other to get the contracts. "When Swebus took over, we lost five holiday days and the retirement age was raised from 63 to 65 years. We really lost a lot," Klang said.
"We get no extra pay for working Christmas, New Years, and other holidays. We get 11 kronor [1 kronor = $0.68] per hour for nights and weekends. Same thing for major holidays," said another driver at the Hornsberg bus depot March 4, serving her first picket duty.
The new contract raises pay for nights and weekends by 6 percent and stipulates extra pay of 42 kronor per hour for the "major" holidays.
The new contract reduces the maximum workday, which often includes several hours of breaks in the middle of the day, to 13.5 hours from 16 hours. This can be adjusted in local contracts. The right to regular, brief coffee and toilet breaks has been written into the contract as a starting point for local negotiations that now are beginning county by county.
This was the central demand of the strike; drivers wanted at least 10 minutes every two hours. There is a deadline that if local negotiations don't resolve the issue in about 18 months, the breaks would be between 6-11 minutes after two hours, or 8-15 minutes after three or three-and-a-half hours.
"We're back at where we started," said a driver at the Hornsberg bus depot March 12. "We have tried for three years to resolve the right to breaks in local negotiations and not made any headway."
"We'll only see if the strike has changed anything when negotiations start," said another driver.
Bus driver Mikael Wiessner said he was disappointed over the contract and its agreement on the breaks. "We had support from a ruling from the Industrial Inspections Committee, we still had the support from 98 percent of the population, and the negotiators gave in. It's unbelievable."
Drivers point out the widespread support they got from passengers and other workers. While Militant supporters visited the pickets at Hornsberg March 5, a metro train driver brought a box of chocolate.
A group of eight women from the health-care section of the Municipal Workers Union joined the picket line too, bringing hot dogs. "I am still surprised at the support we get," one of the strikers said as she watched people at the gates. "On my four-hour shift just before the strike started, eleven passengers spontaneously wished us good luck!"
There were forces campaigning against the strike, though. A representative of the youth organization of the Liberal Party accused the strike of being "an attack on equality," speaking on national radio on March 3. The implication was that the bus drivers' demands would make less money available for wages for nurses and others where the workforce is predominantly women.
Around 20 percent of all bus drivers are women according to the statistics of the Municipal Workers Union. Strikers who are women played a very prominent role on many picket lines, being in the forefront of explaining the fight to supporters and visitors.
The national strike followed several years of fights by bus drivers. Three thousand drivers in Stockholm struck in 1995 against the deteriorating conditions. Earlier there had been local strikes in the nearby towns of Sodertalje and Bromma, and also refusals to work overtime.
"The bus drivers in Sodertalje struck against changes in the work schedules that would reduce their breaks," Ulf Brostrom, one of the bus drivers at the lunch restaurant, explained March 10. "The bus drivers succeeded in stopping the reduction at that time. Now we have it anyway. The bosses got what they wanted through the outsourcing instead."
Jarl Christian Hornig described how drivers from Stockholm had gone to Aarhus, Denmark, during the bus drivers' strike there in 1995-96.
"We almost filled two buses that the local union had organized. We brought our union banners, and carried them in a demonstration through the city together with workers from Denmark, Britain, and other European countries."
Catharina Tirsén is a member of the Metal Workers Union in Stockholm. Dag Tirsén and Anita Ostling contributed to the article.