The Pedagogical Workers’ Association emerged after more than a decade of organised activity and struggle among workers in the service and care sector in the municipality of Partille, Sweden. The association was formed as an independent workers’ organisation in a workplace environment where workers had gradually built a high level of solidarity and collective organisation.
At the time of the association’s formation, approximately ninety-five percent of the workers in one of the residential facilities for people with special disabilities were participating in a network of collective cooperation. This network gradually established contacts with other workplaces in Partille and in the city of Gothenburg.
As workplace protests intensified and the employer attempted to divide the workers’ collective, the workers decided to make their organisation more public. The Pedagogical Workers’ Association was therefore openly announced, and a workplace bulletin entitled Pedagogiskt Arbete (Pedagogical Work) began to be published.
At the same time, the local authorities in Partille municipality had illegally suspended the workers’ representative Atbin Kian and the workplace pedagogue Iraj Y. Rusta. This decision provoked strong reactions among the workers, and the protests quickly spread from the workplace into the public sphere.
The first workers’ demonstrations were organised in Partille and later in central Gothenburg. These events attracted considerable attention in the Swedish media.
As various support initiatives and solidarity networks began to form, the Pedagogical Workers’ Association gradually developed into an important link between militant workers’ collectives and labour networks in Sweden. The publication of the workplace bulletin simultaneously became a prominent example of how workers can create their own organisational tools within the workplace.
Efforts to establish workplace bulletins among militant workers’ circles and to publish workers’ newspapers have long been a central element of the activities of internationalist workers. This tradition dates back both to the autonomous workers’ collectives that emerged in Iran during the difficult years of the 1980s and to the activity carried out in exile during the past three decades.
The workplace bulletin Pedagogiskt Arbete was created within the rehabilitation workplace in Partille as a continuation of more than ten years of organised workers’ struggle in this environment.
The initiative for publishing the bulletin was taken by comrades Bahman Alborzi (Atbin Kyan) and Mohammad Keshavarz (Iraj Y. Rusta), both respected workers among their colleagues. Through his position as an instructor in occupational therapy and work methods for people with special disabilities and autism, he was able to function as a link between several workplaces.
Nearly ninety percent of the workers at the workplace participated actively in writing and distributing the workplace bulletin Pedagogiskt Arbete. Through interviews and questionnaires, workers’ experiences and views were transformed into texts published in the bulletin. For this reason the workers themselves regarded the publication as their own collective voice.
Such a publication could only emerge because workers, through a long struggle, had already developed strong solidarity and organisational strength. After the association was formally established, the bulletin became the official publication of the Pedagogical Workers’ Association.
The high level of workers’ organisation in Partille attracted considerable attention among labour movements and activist groups in Sweden. The strategies developed to unite workers and overcome the control of employers and official trade unions over the workplace became a subject of significant interest.
The Swedish trade-union confederation, the syndicalist movement and the Swedish Workers’ Solidarity Committee awarded Iraj Y. Rusta and Atbin Kyan recognitions for civil courage and workers’ solidarity. Since then, these activists have participated in workers’ conferences and seminars across Sweden where they have presented their experiences of workplace organising.
These discussions have addressed how workplace struggles can develop from scattered protests into organised movements, how workers can overcome legal obstacles, and how employers’ strategies of division can be confronted.
As capitalist forms of management become increasingly complex, new methods are constantly being developed to control workplaces and fragment workers’ collectives. For this reason workers need to understand these mechanisms and develop strategies adapted to the concrete conditions of each workplace.
Strategies for workers’ struggle often emerge from workers’ shared experiences in real conflicts. At the same time, conscious socialist workers can synthesise these experiences and formulate them as a strategy grounded in a scientific understanding of class struggle.
Lectures and presentations by internationalist worker-activists on workplace organising, workers’ associations and workplace bulletins have attracted attention among several workers’ collectives and activists in Sweden. Among those who have highlighted these experiences is Francis’ blog, a well-known voice within the Swedish labour movement.
Despite this, this field of communist activity remains relatively unknown within large sections of the official left and academic Marxism. Yet one of the most important sources of workers’ class consciousness lies precisely in these practical experiences of collective organisation and in understanding the complex methods through which capitalist management seeks to control labour.
IWO- Nov 2023
Further Reading
A Workers’ Newspaper Born from Workplace Struggle
Click here to visit the Facebook page of the Pedagogical Workers’ Association
