While the Nordic labor market model is renowned for providing ‘good’ jobs, we have over the last decade nonetheless seen the rise of platform-mediated gig work, associated with relatively precarious working conditions, in the Nordic countries. Analyzing the emergence and development of platform-mediated gig work in the taxi and food delivery industries in Denmark, Finland, Norway,and Sweden, this article identifies four trajectories: Evasion, disruption, adaption, and market exit. It shows that gig platforms established themselves in the ‘fringes’ of the Nordic labor market model, evaded regulations by classifying workers as self-employed contractors, recruited workers from marginalized segments of the labor force, and provoked regulatory responses that deregulatedmarkets to facilitate their business model. The analysis thus highlights the importance of product market regulations in shaping the development of platform-mediated gig work and emphasizes the segmented nature of the Nordic labor market model. ©2020 Author and Journal.

This article examines the changes in power resources in the Swedish labour market since the 1990s and investigates the factors that have caused these changes by utilising an ideological theoretical approach. Specifically, it explores the impact of ideological changes on power resources, such as the level of unemployment, the strength of trade unions, and institutional power resources. The ideological approach is used as the analytical tool to analyse the interaction between ideas and the material world. The article analyses 24 government policy documents and how they relate to the context where the ideas arise. First, I provide a contextual description in which the changing of power resources has occurred, then government bills related to the changing of power resources are analysed. I argue that the changes were motivated by the need to adapt to a globalised and flexible economy to create growth. The reduction in employeesʼ power resources can be seen as an outcome of a dialectical spiral between ideas and the context in which they exist, and I suggest that promoting employee interests rather than growth could have led to a different outcome. © 2024 Author(s). 

Can the Nordic wage-setting model, where social partners decide wages through collective agreements, counteract a growing low-paid sector? This article tests four definitions of low-paid jobs to analyze whether this sector has grown for the period 2005–2020 in Sweden. Despite policy changes pointing towards growth, all definitions show a slight decrease in low-paid jobs over time. The authors argue that the industrial relations system, with the aim of keeping the industry wage increases in check to aid export competitiveness, also sets a uniform level wage that limits low-paid jobs. It is also found that low pay in the Swedish setting is partly a result of working less than full-time or having unstable employment, and service workers and those with low education are becoming increasingly common in this position.

[No abstract available]

To bring alienation to an end, Johan Alfonsson writes, a radical change in both capitalist society’s basic practices and premise, self-determination, is required.

With heritability methodology researchers using twin studies, and during recent year also DNA studies, have claimed that heredity plays a crucial role in explaining social outcomes. Explaining what causes social outcomes is a strive to explain how reality is constituted, and is thus an ontological question. The purpose of this article is to examine the unspoken ontological assumptions in heritability studies from a critical realistic perspective. First I’ll explain the basics of the heritability methodology, the twin methodology and DNA studies that measure heritability, then I’ll describe the previous criticism of these studies. Thereafter I’ll argue that the heritability studies do not examine the actual causes of social events, but rather that the measures are driven by other underlying mechanisms, which thus are the ones possessing the generative power to influence social outcomes. Against this background, I argue that the studies commit the fallacy of misplaced concreteness and the epistemic fallacy. In conclusion, I argue that concrete social phenomena should be understood as an interplay between different generative mechanisms.

Otryggheten i det svenska arbetslivet har ökat under de senaste decennierna. Inga andra länder har haft så drastiska förändringar som Sverige. Fler arbetar med tillfälliga kontrakt eller som bemannings­anställda och på senare år har en ny form av gigarbetare dykt upp som ofta helt saknar anställning. 

I Det otrygga arbetslivet i Sverige beskrivs orsakerna bakom förändringarna och vilka konsekvenser de har fått för de anställda och för arbetslivet i stort. Författaren visar genom att ta upp makroekonomiska och politiska förändringar att det har skett en förskjutning på arbetsmarknaden som har förflyttat makten från arbetstagarna till arbetsgivarna, vilket har underminerat de anställdas trygghet. Olika anställningsformer leder till skilda typer av otrygghet och arbetsmiljö­problem. Med utgångspunkt i maktresursteori och klassteori söker författaren svar på varför otryggheten har ökat för vissa grupper och inte för andra. 

Boken riktar sig till universitetsstudenter i främst sociologi och arbetsvetenskap, till fackligt aktiva samt till alla med intresse för politik och svensk arbetsmarknad. © 2022 Studentlitteratur