The purpose of this thesis is to study how the Swedish welfare state formulated a question of shorter work hours, 1919—2002. During the 1900s, several official reports were published in order to produce knowledge about this issue and construct a manageable inquiry about shorter work hours. The aim of this thesis is to examine what were formulated as problems and solutions and which arguments and beliefs emerged from these formulations. Official state reports are regarded as instruments of knowledge production by the state. This intelligence was required to justify the possibility and desirability of the reform that shaped the question of shorter work hours in the welfare state.   The aim of the official reports was to create knowledge, which determined the value of working time reduction. Leisure as welfare meant that the state interpreted the citizens’ needs and formulated working-time reduction as either a possible or impossible reform. Working hours have never been justified as a reform that simply gives more leisure and less time for work. The reform was instead considered possible and desirable because it was interpreted as helping to reproduce the labour force or capitalism as a whole. It was thought impossible and undesirable when considered to be a threat to this reproduction.   However, there were two major reformulations of the question of shorter work. In the middle of the selected period, the matter moved from the sphere of production to a consumption sphere, meaning that the issue became less conflicted. The state’s responsibility to push the reform was deemphasized. Another reformulation is when flexibility was formulated as a solution, and thus made regulation of working time undesirable and unnecessary. This study shows how the conception of a question of shorter work hours was a process requiring formulations and reformulations and how these expressions fundamentally changed over time, although the basic premises remained.

The object of interest in this essay is the issue of reducing work hours and how that issue was handled in the Trade Union Confederation (LO). In previous research the struggle for shorter work hours has been viewed as a struggle between trade union and employers’ organizations. The previous research has had difficulties in explaining LOs part in this struggle, their actions have not been the expected. LO had not played an active part in the struggle for shorter work hours and the previous research has not been able to given a satisfying explanation for this. In this essay the starting-point is another. The issue of reducing work hours, this essay argues, was a problem for LO. The problem consists of the need for LO to mark against communism, both inside and outside of the organization. But this essay also argues that the issue of reducing work hours is in it self subversive and therefore a problem for the reformist LO. From this staring-point the essay analyses the view of the issue of reducing work hours in LO during the period of 1945-1967. The conclusion in the essay is that LO disarmed the issue of reducing work hours, making it harmless. By shifts in conceptions of needs, the possible and conceptions of time and development the issue of reducing work hours was disarmed. The disarmed issue enabled LO to unite the organization in the delicate matter without the risk of pursuing a subversive issue.