Organising Tech in Sweden is a limited podcast series exploring union organising in Swedish tech companies. Join us as we sit down with some of the people involved in the campaigns to win collective bargaining rights at two of Sweden's tech unicorns, Klarna and Spotify.
Listen to our latest episode:
🔊 Ep 9: Organizing for Freedom
Produced by Hakuna Matata Produktion
Cover art by Anya K. Jordan @anyakjordan.bsky.social
Theme music by Ptzery
🔊 Ep 9: Organizing for Freedom
We thought the season was over, but the wins keep coming, so we decided to drop an episode to celebrate another one, this time with the mastermind behind the Klarna and Spotify campaigns: Unionen negotiator Björn Larm! Björn breaks down the five year effort to sign a collective bargaining agreement with Apple Retail, what the workers wanted, and what they missed out by not having the CBA in place when times weren't so good.
We close the show off by talking about Unionen's new campaign, Frihet (which means "freedom" in Swedish), which is focused on giving tech workers the information they need to organise, connecting them with other organisers, and giving workers a way to let Unionen know what is important to them.
For our final episode, we couldn't have a better guest than Ethan Earle, General Coordinator for Organizing for Power, a training program for organisers that Ethan co-founded in 2019 alongside legendary organiser Jane McAlevey (may she rest in power). O4P has trained more than 40,000 people from 1,800+ organisations in 115 countries over the 5 years of its existance on the core fundamentals of organising and how to win more and win better in the campaigns that matter most.
We recap the series and Ethan draws out vital lessons for organisers. We talk about what went wrong in the "shallow organising" campaigns of the 2000s and 2010s and what we've learned from them that has enabled recent victories like the United Auto Workers contract and the bright sparks of the Palestine solidarity movement. Ethan leaves us with a powerful call to action and an invitation to join the upcoming Organizing for Power Core Fundamentals training in February. Gather a group of 10 people, sign up, and let's start winning!
Hanneli Lindholm from Sveriges Ingenjörer (Engineers of Sweden) is here to talk about organising in the games industry. For a small country, Sweden has a surprising number of major games studios, including EA DICE, Avalanche, Paradox, and of course Mojang, creators of the best-selling game of all time: Minecraft! Mojang is also in advanced negotiations to sign a collective bargaining agreement, aided by organising activity all the way across the globe. Hanneli shares what games workers can gain from unions, and how unions cooperate in individual workplaces, at the national level in Sweden, and internationally.
Our friends over at Unionen have launched a campaign for tech workers to
gain real, meaningful influence in our workplaces! If you think all
employees in the tech industry should have influence, be treated with
respect, and be listened to, check out the
Frihet
page ("frihet" means "freedom" in Swedish) and get involved! Unionen have a
plan, and
Sen and Henry are back to tell us all about what it takes to run a local union club. We look at what positions there are on the board, what the responsibilities of the chairperson are, how to get people engaged and involved, and how to be a leader without burning yourself out. Building a democratic workplace is hard (in fact, two kinds of hard), but for Sen and Henry, incredibly rewarding as well!
Our good friends over at Tech Won't Save Us have a great episode on an aspect of union organising that we haven't touched on so far in our podcast. Be sure to listen to No Tech for Apartheid with Mohammad Khatami and Gabi Schubiner for a powerful discussion of the complicity of Google, Amazon, and Microsoft in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and how tech workers are organizing to stop it.
Workers and unions have an incredibly important role to play in the fight for human rights, social justice, and liberation. We must stand in solidarity with Palestine and oppressed people everywhere in the world!
We've heard a lot from organisers so far in the series; now it's time to talk to one of our counterparts from one of Sweden's unions. Per Holfve, an advisor with Naturvetarna (the Swedish Association of Professional Scientists), joins us to talk about how scientists fit into tech organising, how unions participate in organising campaigns, and combating gender and race discrimination in an increasingly multicultural Sweden. It's a fascinating conversation, and Per leaves us with a message of hope: we will get there in the end!
Henry, founder of the Unionen club at Spotify, and Ralf, current vice chair of the club, tell the story of organising efforts at Spotify, educate us on organising strategies, and warn us against taking shortcuts. A CBA hasn't been won yet, but the saga of Spotify is far from over!
When you hear "The Swedish Model", do you think of a Volvo? Fear not! Former Klarna employee and labour law expert Kim is back on the show to explain the Swedish approach to labour market and how it differs from most other countries (with the exception of a few of our Scandinavian neighbours). We discuss how it came to be, what makes it especially effective, whether startups need collective bargaining agreements, and what lessons we can take from the Swedish model to apply in other countries.
🔊 Ep 2: Organising Klarna - Part 2
We finish our conversation with Sen, Thomas, and Kim about how a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) was won at Klarna. In this episode, we cover the impact of immigrant workers on organising, the impact of organising on organisers, and the impact of strikes on negotiations. All of this and a happy ending too!
🔊 Ep 1: Organising Klarna - Part 1
We kick off Organising Tech in Sweden in style by recounting the story of how a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) was won at Klarna, a major Swedish fintech. In fact, Klarna was the first unicorn in Sweden to be unionised (and probably the first unicorn in Europe as well)!
To hear all about how this went down, your co-hosts Josh and Ray are joined by Thomas, the founder of the Klarna Unionen Club (a union "local", to use terminology that might be more familiar to US listeners); Sen, the chair of the club who won the bargaining agreement against the odds; and Kim, a former Klarna employee with extensive knowledge of Swedish labour law and market policy.