Industrial Relations Journal 30:5 ISSN 0019-8692 Swedish engineering employers: The search for industrial peace in the absence of centralised collective bargaining Peter Sheldon and Louise Thornthwaite The Swedish engineering employers’ association recently shifted away from the dramatic decentralisation of bargaining it had pioneered. Behind this shift were employer desires for better guarantees of industrial peace. The authors conclude by stressing the importance of the relationships between employer strategy, historical contingency and debates on bar- gaining structure. 1. Introduction In the early 1990s, Sten Edlund an influential Swedish academic, suggested that the, ‘1980s proved to be a decade of pay disputes, marking perhaps the conclusive break- down of the Swedish model as a harmonious autonomy of the labour market parties, with the State as a fairly passive guarantor in the background’ (Edlund, 1993: 38). In autumn 1996, officials of key unions in the export sector of Swedish manufacturing sent a joint letter to employer association counterparts inviting them to discuss re- establishing joint regulation of industrial peace for industry level collective bar- gaining. The outcome of these discussions was a March 1997 Negotiating Agreement. It came into effect on October 1, 1997 for an open period of time. Covering some 800,000 employees, equivalent to 20 per cent of Sweden’s workforce, the document’s intent is to minimise or avoid open industrial conflict (EIRR, 1997/279: 11). Does this ❒ Louise Thornthwaite is Senior Lecturer, School of Industrial Relations, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia and Peter Sheldon is Associate Professor, Business School, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia.  Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main St., Malden, MA 02148, USA. 514 Industrial Relations Journal