ABSTRACT

Both the wage policy report to, and various proposals made at, the 1971 LO Congress suggested that branch funds could serve as 'an instrument of wages policy'. The idea has its historical roots in the traditional desire on the part of the unions to redistribute the total wage share between high- and low-wage earning groups. Ten years later the 1961 Congress had before it a new solution - branch rationalisation funds - for essentially the same problem. The vast majority of the LO members who took part in the study campaign on employee funds clearly thought, in the autumn of 1975, a time of marked recession, that the question of 'excess profits' was indeed a problem. A heavier corporate tax as a permanent feature of the Swedish tax system is a much more complicated question. Some increase in the rate of corporation tax is always possible.