The traditional narrative of technological disruption to the labor market is driven by the Luddite rebellion of the 19th century, with workers violently reacting to new technologies that threaten to destroy their livelihoods.  It’s a narrative that has emerged with renewed vigor in the face of widespread predictions of technologies such as AI and robotics about to sweep away all jobs in their path.

Recent research from Lund University highlights how this narrative isn’t the only outcome in town, however.  The study charts the progress made by Sweden from a poor, northern country into a modern industrial power, harnessing electrical energy to transform industry, transportation, and agriculture.

The electrical revolution was the second undertaken by the country and whilst it did undoubtedly create tensions between employers and employees, it didn’t result in heightened anxiety or anger among the workforce, with workers arguing for higher wages rather than to halt the march of technology in the hope that their jobs might be spared.

Empowering workers

Rather than fearing widespread job losses, the paper argues that Swedish workers instead examined how the technologies could empower them.  It’s a lesson the authors believe could be illustrative in terms of our adaptations to the 4th industrial revolution of today.

The paper highlights how the Swedish labor market had been a place of considerable change around the turn of the 20th century, as unions were formed and strikes enacted.  Indeed, these strikes were increasingly bold, with a bomb even placed on the Amalthea ship in 1908 to protest against the arrival of British strikebreakers into Malmo.

This sparked an ongoing series of showdowns between employers and organized labor that continued through the first world war.  It’s a movement that resulted in politicians extending voting rights to working-class people and was one of the key first steps in forging the social contract between citizens and the state in Sweden.

Electrical revolution

It was also a period, however, where Sweden was rapidly building its national grid, which would provide electricity to homes and workplaces across the land.  This introduced significant changes in the workplace, not least because it allowed owners to replace coal-fired engines with smaller motors to help power each machine.  This was a more reliable source of energy that allowed the pace of production to rise.  It also caused churn in the workforce, with some jobs becoming obsolete and other new ones being created.

The common narrative would link these two forces, that it was the technological change that resulted in disruption in the labor market, the rise in organized labor, and the attempts to save workers’ jobs.  It’s a narrative that chimes with the famous Luddite rebellion in Britain during the first industrial revolution.

After analyzing over 8,000 work stoppages between 1863 and 1927, however, the researchers found that not one of them was recorded as being against the electrification of the workplace or society more broadly.  Indeed, barely a handful was against mechanization more broadly.

Technology and labor

The researchers delved deeper into the topic by analyzing maps showing the rollout of the electricity grid so that they could compare these with census data from the country at the time.  The analysis revealed that before electrification, each parish was fairly homogenous, but this changed after electrification as those who were connected to the grid changed radically, not least due to a higher number of strikes.

This suggests that while workers weren’t explicitly mentioning electrification as a reason for strikes, they were nonetheless linked.  For instance, the strikes were most common among the industrial workforce, and especially among those whose skills were in high demand.  It wasn’t common among agricultural workers whose jobs were most at risk.

While technological change undoubtedly introduces fear, suspicion, and anxiety, the Swedish example shows how technologies can empower workers rather than diminish them.  The paper argues, however, that this more positive perspective only occurred when workers realized that they should be sharing the rising productivity delivered by the new technologies and work towards achieving that.