Vol. 75/No. 27      July 25, 2011

Below is a letter to the Militant from Björn Tirsén, a worker at a Scania truck plant in Södertälje, Sweden, near Stockholm. Tirsén explains why he is making a “blood money” contribution to the Socialist Workers Party’s Capital Fund. The fund makes possible long-term projects of the party.

Blood money is a good description of the one-off “bonus” payments employers hand out as bribes to try to get workers to accept dangers on the job, speedup, and wage cuts, instead of joining together to fight for their common class interests. Management hopes these payments will keep workers quiet in the face of its daily trampling on their humanity and dignity.

Refusing to be drawn in, class-conscious workers take the money and put it to good use by contributing it to the Capital Fund.

June 20, 2011

To the Militant

Dear fellow workers,

The bosses at Scania where I work have insulted us with a “blood money” bribe of 3,613 kronor (it was 5,000 kronor before taxes), which I want to put towards building a movement for ending the dictatorship of capital (1 krona=US 15 cents).

Scania, which produces trucks and has about 35,000 employees around the world, admits to making a profit of 9 billion kronor in 2010. That is about 260,000 kronor profit per employee.

I earn about 190,000 kronor a year on the engine assembly line after income tax has been deducted. And they are “giving” us a 2.5 percent increase in wages at a time when even official inflation in Sweden runs at 3.3 percent annually (gas prices have risen at an 8 percent rate recently).

And in face of everything we are confronting, they are giving us this one-time sum of 5,000 kronor as part of their pay “deal” with the hope—in vain I believe—of keeping us quiet.

In solidarity,
Björn Tirsén
Södertälje, Sweden