Election Guide 2002 - Sweden.se

Six-hour working day
Ever since the labour movement organised itself to
campaign for suffrage and an eight-hour working day,
more than a hundred years ago, a struggle has been waged
concerning who is to benefit from the rationalisation
of production. The length and disposition of working
hours have played a vital part in efforts to reduce
employers’ power.
In recent years the pace of working life has
accelerated. More and more people are being sicklisted
because of over exertion and burnout. A reduction of
working hours can counteract this by improving the
quality of life. There will be time to spare for children,
leisure, trade-union and political activity and the
company of friends and relatives.
Employees must be given more say concerning their
working hours. By reducing the norm for full-time work,
at the same time as the disposition of working hours is
decided through negotiations between unions and
employers, we will achieve working time which is
adapted to people instead of the other way round.
The Left Party’s objective is a six-hour working day
with no reduction of pay.
A strong and democratically controlled
public sector
Private solutions mean that everyone is expected to
arrange their own pension finance, their own security
in the event of illness and unemployment and their own
children’s right to a good education and good-quality
child care. The bourgeois freedom of choice is fundamentally
false, because it makes freedom of choice a
commodity. When public activity is commercialised,
freedom of choice increases for those with plenty of
money but security and service are impaired for the
majority. Instead the Left Party wants to work for good
medical care, elderly care, education, child care, a fair
pension and health insurance for everybody. Alternative
forms of management can serve as an adjunct in the
public sector, but health care must never be driven by
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