Skogsarbetarna och motorsågen : en studie av arbetsliv och teknisk förändring

• Main Author: Hjelm, Jonny
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: Swedish
• Published: Umeå universitet, Historiska studier 1991
• Subjects: Forestry; forest worker; chain saw; mechanization; rationalization; labour history; working life; technical change; cutting operation; History; Historia; Northern Sweden
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-144163

This study deals with how workers actively introduced a new technique to their own labour process. More specifically, it is concerned with how Swedish forest workers during the 1950s gradually replaced the manual one-man crosscut saw with the motor-driven saw. The workers’ own views and actions are of central importance to the analysis of this process of technical change. Therefore fifty elderly forest workers, who had worked in forests in the county of Västerbotten in northern Sweden, were inter­viewed. The point of departure of the study is the fact that it was the forest workers themselves who financed and bought the chain saw. The study indicates that there were two main reasons for acquiring a chain saw. The forest workers hoped to lessen the physical work load and to improve their wages. The first workers to use the chain saw I called ”the pioneers”. They had made some, but rather little, acquaintance with the chain saw before they started to use it. They were often disappointed with the new tool. In the middle of the 1950s, the construction of the chain saws was improved and, as a result, the chain saw made its breakthrough in the second half of the 1950s. Those who bought the chain saw during this period were clearly more pleased with it than the pioneers had been. A few years into the 1960s, when almost all forest workers had bought a chain saw, unemployment slowly started to increase. Simultaneously, the piecework wage system began to change. The chain saws were by this time becoming very efficient, and the benefit could and would not go solely to the forest workers. Employers and forest owners were also to have a share and they manifested this will in the wage negotiations. The forest workers responded by increasing their work tempo, to make the salaries remain at a high level, at least for the most efficient workers. For others, the older and those who were less productive, things became harder. The increase in work intensity brought with it an increase in accidents and injuries. The workers’ ...