ABSTRACT
From a Swedish perspective, industrial relations underwent dramatic changes during the last decades of the twentieth century. Some of the characteristics of what was once called the Swedish Model were said to have changed or even vanished. First and foremost a central part of the Swedish model, the centralized bargaining system, was gradually replaced with more decentralized forms. From the 1930s, industrial relations in Sweden can be characterized as a tri-partite corporatist system based on collective bargaining with the state staying in the background, but ready ‘for action’ and active within an institutionalized dialogue between the three parties on basic conditions and main goals. The economic crisis that hit Sweden in the late 1920s spurred the strike activity among strong but uncoordinated unions in the 1930s. Sweden experienced an exceptionally high rate of industrial conflict. Sweden experienced a late and astonishingly rapid industrialization and urbanization between 1880 and 1920.
