<p>The aim of this thesis was to study the strategies that Kamraterna (‘the Comrades’), an association for Stockholm’s policemen, and the Swedish Policemen’s Union employed in order to solve the issue of women in police service in the years 1957-1971. I have dealt with the attitudes they had to women in police service and the conceptions of gender that were expressed. The trade unions’ way of trying to solve the issue of women’s service and position in the organisation and Kamraterna’s actions vis-à-vis their female members have also been in focus. Finally, I have also studied the way in which the police profession was made masculine and feminine and how this could be used as a part of the strategies. </p><p>Women’s entrance into the police profession on the same terms as men created and made visible the gender structures in the police force. The male police officers saw their rights threatened, if the female labour could be judged differently and hence be promoted more rapidly. This conflict made conceptions of male and female qualities visible, and above all in Kamraterna, a struggle was started to maintain male police officers’ privileges and rights. </p><p>The unions emphasised that women would have to be employed on equal terms and that equal pay must imply equal work. Women were however considered to be best suited for social police work and work with women and children, while men were chiefly associated with the parts of the profession involving physical strength and violence. It was difficult to implement the principle of equal terms in practice, since there was a basic idea that women were different. Both Kamraterna and the Swedish Policemen’s Union used dual closure in order to solve this dilemma. Kamraterna’s usurpation was intended to influence the police commissioner and to unite the members, including the women, thereby creating a collective unity about the issue of the female police officers’ posts and work. They tried to remove the women from foot patrol work by having them relocated to other departments with civil duties. In this way they endeavoured to keep the patrol work as an exclusively male area by resorting to exclusion. When the National Police Board started experimental work in 1969 with female police officers being stationed in special units with civil duties, the Swedish Policemen’s Union supported this effort and tried to see to it that the instructions were followed. The Policemen’s Union thus employed exclusion. Excluding women from parts of the profession meant that the unions used a demarcationary strategy resulting in a gendered division of labour being created rather than the women being entirely excluded from the police profession. The patrol work was the part of the police profession that women ought not to have access to, and this was linked to masculine qualities and symbolism. Words like physical strength, strenuous service and violence were related to the patrol work. The uniforms and weapons underscored the masculine connotations of the patrol work. A hegemonic masculinity was created here, which could be used as a means for excluding female police officers. The women’s uniforms looked different and their weapons were not the same, which should have made it more difficult for them to be regarded as real police officers. </p>

The aim of this thesis was to study the strategies that Kamraterna (‘the Comrades’), an association for Stockholm’s policemen, and the Swedish Policemen’s Union employed in order to solve the issue of women in police service in the years 1957-1971. I have dealt with the attitudes they had to women in police service and the conceptions of gender that were expressed. The trade unions’ way of trying to solve the issue of women’s service and position in the organisation and Kamraterna’s actions vis-à-vis their female members have also been in focus. Finally, I have also studied the way in which the police profession was made masculine and feminine and how this could be used as a part of the strategies. Women’s entrance into the police profession on the same terms as men created and made visible the gender structures in the police force. The male police officers saw their rights threatened, if the female labour could be judged differently and hence be promoted more rapidly. This conflict made conceptions of male and female qualities visible, and above all in Kamraterna, a struggle was started to maintain male police officers’ privileges and rights. The unions emphasised that women would have to be employed on equal terms and that equal pay must imply equal work. Women were however considered to be best suited for social police work and work with women and children, while men were chiefly associated with the parts of the profession involving physical strength and violence. It was difficult to implement the principle of equal terms in practice, since there was a basic idea that women were different. Both Kamraterna and the Swedish Policemen’s Union used dual closure in order to solve this dilemma. Kamraterna’s usurpation was intended to influence the police commissioner and to unite the members, including the women, thereby creating a collective unity about the issue of the female police officers’ posts and work. They tried to remove the women from foot patrol work by having them relocated to other departments with civil duties. In this way they endeavoured to keep the patrol work as an exclusively male area by resorting to exclusion. When the National Police Board started experimental work in 1969 with female police officers being stationed in special units with civil duties, the Swedish Policemen’s Union supported this effort and tried to see to it that the instructions were followed. The Policemen’s Union thus employed exclusion. Excluding women from parts of the profession meant that the unions used a demarcationary strategy resulting in a gendered division of labour being created rather than the women being entirely excluded from the police profession. The patrol work was the part of the police profession that women ought not to have access to, and this was linked to masculine qualities and symbolism. Words like physical strength, strenuous service and violence were related to the patrol work. The uniforms and weapons underscored the masculine connotations of the patrol work. A hegemonic masculinity was created here, which could be used as a means for excluding female police officers. The women’s uniforms looked different and their weapons were not the same, which should have made it more difficult for them to be regarded as real police officers.

According to most ways of measuring it the Swedish trade union movement is the strongest in the world. The Swedish Trade Union Confederation is the largest and most influential union confederation by far. Since the 1980s though, Sweden experienced a shift in the power relations between employers and unions in favour of the former. This has coincided with a growing importance for political communication, public relations and the mass media. This development has presented the Swedish trade union movement with a multitude of challenges. One of the major ones is how to influence the representations of trade unions and their viewpoints in the news media. The purpose of this study is to describe and try to explain how the Swedish Trade Union Confederation and its affiliated unions act to confront the “medialisation” of the public debate. A combination of research methods are used in this study in order to investigate both the historical development of trade union news management and the use of news management by trade union personnel in their everyday work. The study of how news management historically became a part in the overall union activity was performed through qualitative analysis of archive material. The study of the everyday uses of news management and the factors constraining this work builds upon interviews with the press officers of the TUC affiliated unions and the TUC itself. The study shows how both the historical development and the everyday use of news management by the Swedish trade union movement need to be understood in a context. This context contains political, economical, ideological and organisational structures that at the same time enables and constrains the adaption of news management. The study points towards five central paradoxes which faces the trade unions when they seek desired media attention and try to avoid unwanted publicity. The first paradox concerns how to fight hard in the interest of the members, while at the same time avoid being described as a sectional interest. The second paradox stems from the desire of the trade unions to be perceived as big and strong and how this might result in the labelling of them as ‘Goliath’ during a conflict. The next paradox concerns how trade unions want to show the importance of the work done by their members during a conflict and the way this might lead to media attention about how the strike affects ‘innocent bystanders’. The fourth paradoxes come from the wish of the trade unions to make their local representatives visible in mass media. This could result in unwanted publicity, due to the difference between blue-collar trade unionists and middleclass journalists. The fifth paradox stems from the importance of acting quickly to achieve wanted media attention and to avoid unwanted. The paradox is that it might be hard to be fast and at the same time have a thorough democratic process on a controversial issue.

This research explores how unions, corporations and the federal government in Canada are responding to the dual economic and climate change crisis. Climate change politics have fostered alliance-forming both between the labour and environmental movements as well as between the state and capital. Climate change policy over the past two decades has been a planned, coordinated neoliberal project by the state and capital that has led to increasing emissions. Meanwhile, most unions successfully transcended the ‘jobs versus the environment’ dichotomy being used by business to propagate a voluntarist climate change policy. After giving their support to the ratification of Kyoto, labour has struggled to operationalize labour-environmental alliance-forming. Recently, both labour and the state-capital alliance have drawn on an ecological modernist discourse to frame climate change as an opportunity for jobs or capital accumulation, respectively. But this discourse fails to address the transnational dynamics of climate change, and economic and environment justice.

This research explores how unions, corporations and the federal government in Canada are responding to the dual economic and climate change crisis. Climate change politics have fostered alliance-forming both between the labour and environmental movements as well as between the state and capital. Climate change policy over the past two decades has been a planned, coordinated neoliberal project by the state and capital that has led to increasing emissions. Meanwhile, most unions successfully transcended the ‘jobs versus the environment’ dichotomy being used by business to propagate a voluntarist climate change policy. After giving their support to the ratification of Kyoto, labour has struggled to operationalize labour-environmental alliance-forming. Recently, both labour and the state-capital alliance have drawn on an ecological modernist discourse to frame climate change as an opportunity for jobs or capital accumulation, respectively. But this discourse fails to address the transnational dynamics of climate change, and economic and environment justice.

<p>The ever increasing regional and global trade competition has manifested itself in a growing number of non-standard forms of employment including the increasing use of &quot / temporary employment services&quot / (or &ldquo / labour brokers&rdquo / as commonly referred to). Labour brokers enter into employment relationships as third parties with client companies to supply employees through a commercial contract. These labour services usually fall outside the regular twoparty contract of employment defined under existing labour laws and thus the employees are not covered by that law. Labour brokers have been labelled as &ldquo / the re-emergence of new apartheid strategy&rdquo / and &ldquo / modern slavery&rdquo / by some quarters in labour sectors of Namibia and South Africa. Trade unions, particularly, have led the most vocal resistance against labour brokers in both countries. They argue that, like previous apartheid contract labour systems, labour brokers today erode standards for decent working conditions and weaken union representations in the workplace. Thus unions have repeatedly sent strong calls to lawmakers to amend existing labour laws and &bdquo / forever put labour broking in its grave where it belong‟1. On the other hand, employers have argued that recent forces of globalisation demand flexible employment strategies and banning labour brokers will make it more difficult for local businesses compete profitably globally via flexible short term employments and can lead to losses of many job opportunities.2 It is against this background that I will argue that current labour laws should be amended to define and regulate labour brokers more closely and compel them to recognise workers rights and conditions as equal as those of standard employees. But first, I will highlight some socio-economic indicators influencing the labour markets in South Africa and Namibia, including the history of worker‟s rights under the contract labour systems in both countries. Second, I will look at some of the expressed exploitive conditions resulting from the use of labour brokers and also look at some reasons why businesses engage labour brokers. Thereafter I will point out some of the reasons why trade unions have called for a total ban on labour brokers. I will then discuss the difficulty of banning labour brokers, including the constitutional challenge in the landmark case of African Personnel Services v Government of the Republic of Namibia3. Lastly i will expand on the ruling by the Namibian Supreme Court of Appeal (NSA) recommending a regulatory approach in line with the International Labour Organisation‟s (ILO) conventions on third-party employments.</p>

The aim of this thesis is to present and analyse the role of the environmental groups and the trade unions on the issue of the environmental protection through the economic methodology. The specific groups have strong connection with the environmental issue since the beginning of the environmental movement. However, the two groups stand on different positions in the market and in the society, therefore they have different objectives and different tools for the achievement of their targets. Following the groups' different characteristics, I analyse their targets and how these could influence the firms' technological choice, the level of the production, the profits and finally the level of the emissions released by the firms' production. In the second chapter, a deeper analysis on the behavior and the strategy of the environmental groups is provided in order to shed more light on their objectives from the beginning of the environmental movement. Following a review of the literature an analytical framework for studying targets or motivations of the environmental groups is analysed. Three interrelated factors which affect the strategy and the decisions of the group are identified; the group s size, their budget and the weight of impure altruism in their individual and collective objectives. A positive relation exists between the group s size and the financial contributions, and the interaction of the personal expectations with the collective objectives encourages and benefits the group s actions. In the third chapter following the experience from the real world, the participation of the environmental groups in the emissions trading system (ETS) is analysed. Concretely, a competition in an ETS as a game between two firms and environmental group is modelled. According to the results, there is a U-shape relationship between how polluting the chosen technology is and the degree of the environmentalists impure altruism. Firms choose a more polluting technology in the presence of the environmentalists than in their absence if they are characterised by a high enough degree of impure altruism. Finally, in the fourth chapter the influence of the trade unions on the firms' environmental technological choice is analysed. However, in addition to the literature and according to the real world experience the unions care for the environmental protection. Particularly, the decentralised structure is compared with the centralised structure under a Cournot duopoly. I conclude that the decentralised structure could always provide higher incentives to the firms for the adoption of a better (less polluting) technology. Furthermore, there is an inverse U-shape relation between the firm s emissions and the size of the market. Finally, the emissions could be less under the centralised case compared to the decentralised for relatively low market size.

The conditions for the third, non-profit sector, such as grassroots organisations and trade unions, have changed dramatically in recent years, due to prevailing social trends. Non-profit organisations have been seen as early adopters of information technology, but the area is, at the same time, largely unattended by scientific research. Meanwhile, the field of information systems development is, to an increasing extent, recognising the importance of user involvement in the design process. Nevertheless, participatory development approaches, such as Participatory Design are not suited to the context of entire organisations, and new, networked organisational structures, such as those of non-profit organisations. This reasoning also applies to the theoretical framework of Activity Theory, whose potential benefits for systems development have been acclaimed but less often tried in practice. This thesis aims, first, at extending Participatory Design to use in large, particularly non-profit organisations. This aim is partly achieved by integrating Participatory Design with an Argumentative Design approach and with the application of Activity Theory modified for an organisational context. The purpose is to obtain reasoning about and foreseeing the consequences of different design solutions. Second, the thesis aims at exploring information technology needs, solutions, and consequences in non-profit organisations, in trade unions in particular. The case under study is the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) and the design of an information system for its 250 000 shop stewards. The thesis is based on six related studies complemented with data from work in a local design group working according to the principles of Participatory Design. The first study was aimed at investigating and comparing trade union management’s view of the new technology and the actual needs of shop stewards. The second study investigated the situation, tasks and problems of shop stewards, as a pre-requisite for finding information technology needs. The third study merged the previous findings into an argumentative design of an information systems design proposal. The fourth study collected the voices from secondary user groups in the organisation, and presented an Activity theoretical analysis of the union organisation and a modified design proposal in the form of a prototype. The fifth study presented an Activity theoretical framework, modified for organisational application, and used it for producing hypotheses on possible shop steward tasks and organisational consequences of the implementation of the information system. The sixth paper was aimed at the initial testing of the hypotheses, through the evaluation of information technology facilities in one of the individual union affiliations. The complementary data was used to propose further modifications of the integrated Participatory, Argumentative, and Activity Theory design approach. The major contributions of the study are, first, a modified Participatory Design approach to be applied at three levels; in general as a way of overcoming experienced difficulties with the original approach, in the context of entire, large organisations, and in the specific non-profit organisation context. The second contribution is generated knowledge in the new research area of information technology in the non-profit, trade union context, where for instance the presented prototype can be seen as a source of inspiration. Future research directions include further development and formalisation of the integrated Participatory Design approach, as well as actual consequences of implementing information technology in non-profit organisations and trade unions. / On the day of the public defence the status of article V was: Submitted.

<p>The ever increasing regional and global trade competition has manifested itself in a growing number of non-standard forms of employment including the increasing use of &quot / temporary employment services&quot / (or &ldquo / labour brokers&rdquo / as commonly referred to). Labour brokers enter into employment relationships as third parties with client companies to supply employees through a commercial contract. These labour services usually fall outside the regular twoparty contract of employment defined under existing labour laws and thus the employees are not covered by that law. Labour brokers have been labelled as &ldquo / the re-emergence of new apartheid strategy&rdquo / and &ldquo / modern slavery&rdquo / by some quarters in labour sectors of Namibia and South Africa. Trade unions, particularly, have led the most vocal resistance against labour brokers in both countries. They argue that, like previous apartheid contract labour systems, labour brokers today erode standards for decent working conditions and weaken union representations in the workplace. Thus unions have repeatedly sent strong calls to lawmakers to amend existing labour laws and &bdquo / forever put labour broking in its grave where it belong‟1. On the other hand, employers have argued that recent forces of globalisation demand flexible employment strategies and banning labour brokers will make it more difficult for local businesses compete profitably globally via flexible short term employments and can lead to losses of many job opportunities.2 It is against this background that I will argue that current labour laws should be amended to define and regulate labour brokers more closely and compel them to recognise workers rights and conditions as equal as those of standard employees. But first, I will highlight some socio-economic indicators influencing the labour markets in South Africa and Namibia, including the history of worker‟s rights under the contract labour systems in both countries. Second, I will look at some of the expressed exploitive conditions resulting from the use of labour brokers and also look at some reasons why businesses engage labour brokers. Thereafter I will point out some of the reasons why trade unions have called for a total ban on labour brokers. I will then discuss the difficulty of banning labour brokers, including the constitutional challenge in the landmark case of African Personnel Services v Government of the Republic of Namibia3. Lastly i will expand on the ruling by the Namibian Supreme Court of Appeal (NSA) recommending a regulatory approach in line with the International Labour Organisation‟s (ILO) conventions on third-party employments.</p>

The central focus of the thesis is Alice Arnold (1881-1955), women's organiser for the Workers' Union in Coventry between 1917 and 1931 and Labour councillor on Coventry City Council from 1919. The adoption of a local, biographical approach highlights the need to move beyond generalisations about 'Labour women' and encourages examination of the diverse political experiences of women who worked within trade unionism and municipal labour politics in interwar Britain. Within the context of Coventry's early twentieth century industrial and political development, Arnold's politicisation is explored and her experiences compared with those of men and women activists who worked in the industrial and political wings of the Coventry Labour movement. Additionally material that allows comparisons to be made with national figures as well as those from other localities is employed. As well as emphasising the influence of factors including gender, class and political affiliation upon Arnold's position within the male dominated labour movement between the wars, there is consideration of the effect that her status as a single woman had upon her career. The thesis advances what is known about the development of regional labour politics and emphasises the effects that local political, economic and social factors had upon both the involvement of women and on the attitudes of male colleagues towards women's participation. The study is situated within a tradition of feminist history that seeks not merely to draw attention to what women did but questions their motivations for doing it and how they were able to pursue their political ambitions. Through analysis of a range of primary sources, it examines the effects that gendered perceptions and sexist stereotypes had on the ways in which women were able to work within trade unionism and municipal politics. It places women's interests first in an area of history that has traditionally been dominated by accounts of men's involvement and it challenges the construction of historical accounts that have ignored or marginalised women. The influence of masculine epistemology on the ways in which women's political work has been recorded both nationally and at a local level is examined throughout the thesis.