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Title: This is not SIPTU!
Author: Ciaran Casey
Date: 1995
Language: en
Topics: SAC, Sweden, reportback, Workers Solidarity
Source: Retrieved on 24th November 2021 from http://struggle.ws/ws95/sac44.html
Notes: Published in Workers Solidarity No. 44 — Spring 1995.

Ciaran Casey

This is not SIPTU!

CHRISTMAS saw many emigrants return for the holidays. One was Ciaran

Casey who went to Sweden twenty years ago and is currently International

Secretary of his union, the Central Organisation of Swedish Workers

(SAC). This union describes itself as syndicalist and libertarian

socialist. Workers Solidarity spoke to Ciaran and learnt

There are 13,000 members spread across many industries, with

concentrations in the post office, public transport, local authorities,

childcare and education. While job losses have weakened the traditional

SAC bases in forestry and construction they have been recruiting

increasingly among public sector workers and from the refugee and

immigrant communities.

Super wages and bureaucratic control have no place in their union. The

five full-time national officers must stand for election every four

years and are encouraged not to serve more than two terms. The eleven

‘ombudspersons’ are the skilled negotiators who can be called on by

local union branches. They have to run for election every five years.

All staff receive the same wage, whether general secretary or

telephonist. That wage is the average industrial wage. Officials, unlike

in other unions, cannot be elected delegates to SAC congress or any

other decision making body.

All branches and sections decide themselves on internal matters, it is

the membership in a workplace which decides whether to accept or eject

an agreement or go on strike. The national executive only has a say if

the local branch (which retains a portion of members’ subscriptions)

needs extra cash. In that case the executive will decide if SAC can

afford to give more help.

SAC members pay higher subscriptions than members of other unions.

Part of this money goes to build contacts with militant unions in the

third world,. At present they are talking to free trade unionists and

libertarian socialists in Nepal, China, Indonesia and Bangladesh (where

they are assisting trade unionists campaigning against child labour).

SAC members and branches have taken on concrete solidarity actions

including assisting the emerging free trade unions in Eastern Europe and

running aid convoys to the mining town of Tuzla in Bosnia.

SAC is also active in the struggles against racism, for protection of

the environment, and calls for a 6 hour day as an answer to

unemployment. It not only fights for higher pay and better working

conditions today, but also declares for a libertarian/anarchist

revolution that will put the working class in control and end both

inequality and authoritarianism.