The concept of the work-first principle (arbetslinjen) might be considered old, but still serves as the main principle as well as an instrument in the Swedish labour market and social policy today. The original idea was that work and willingness to work was to be rewarded, especially due to a common opposition against the passive receipt of grants. The general definition of work, today, is that it is something desirable that should be achieved and that unemployed primarily will be offered training or work rather than grants and subsidies. When the Moderate party re-launched themselves as Sweden's "workers' party of today", in the beginning of the 2000's, the concept was brought back into the spotlight. In the elections of 2006 and 2010, the labour market was widely debated and become a controversial issue, with the concept of the work-first principle playing a major role.The purpose of this thesis is to analyse and problematize how the concept was presented and explained in the nationwide newspapers Aftonbladet and Svenska Dagbladet during the 2010 elections, this in order to increase the understanding of the concept?s contemporary definition and policy implications.

The report is about efficiency of a current production group where there is no clear production flow and there are some buffers between the operations. The efficiency is done with the help of a tool that is calledWork process of flow production which is used by Atlas Copco CTO. The most obviously results are that the lead time drops from 25 hours to 425 minutes and that the balancing loss decreases from 85 % to 8 %. The report focus on decreasing transports, decreasing buffers, more reliability in lead time and quality. And a more stimulating labour content for the workers is another result..

Hartz-reformen inleddes 2003 och förändrade mycket i den aktiva arbetsmarknadspolitiken och systemet för den ekonomiska ersättningen vid arbetslöshet stramades till stor del åt. Många regleringar rörande låginkomsttagare skrevs om och hela arbetsmarknaden verkade vändas upp och ner. Innan den ekonomiska krisen slog till i Europa var Tyskland ett land med hög arbetslöshet och statistiken såg inte alls bra ut. Vid 2005 vände detta, och när många EU-länder såg en kraftig ökning av arbetslösheten fortsatte Tyskland att reducera sin arbetslöshet.I Sverige kan vi se många förändringar som liknar reformen eller syftar till att åtgärda samma problemområden. Exempel på detta är subventioner på vissa grupper av arbetstagare, motverkan av svart husarbete och liknande arbetsmarknadspolitiska program genom arbetsförmedlingsstjänster för att hjälpa arbetssökande in på marknaden.De mest betydande faktorerna som spelat in i Tysklands höga sysselsättning bland ungdomar, är till synes en välutvecklad övergång mellan skola och arbetsliv samt en kulturell inställning och sedvänja bland företagarna att stötta ungdomar och leda dem in på arbetsmarknaden.

With new energy directives in place, the Swedish Social Service (SSS) stands beforethe challenge how to reduce the energy demand in its locales. It is a complex matter,as the locales are rented from various property owners and it becomes a question ofhow to reduce the operational electricity and influence the property owners to workmore with energy efficiency. This thesis takes a balanced research approach in threeparts. Firstly a qualitative part in form of interviews with personnel at the SSS and itsproperty owners, secondly a quantitative part of descriptive nature in form of energystatistics and thirdly a literature review of Energy Management (EM) Supply ChainManagement(SCM), Green Supply Chain Management(GSCM) and EnviromentalPerformance Indicators (EPI). This in order to be able to give normativerecommendations of how the SSS should act to reduce its energy consumption in itslocales and provide new insights on how EM, SCM, GSCM and EPI can be applied ineffect.

Sweden became a member of the European Union in 1995. Consequently Sweden became obligated to implement the Working Time Directive 2003/88/EC (formerly termed 93/104/EC). At that time Sweden considered that their legislation already gave their employees as high level of protection as the directive prescribed. Instead they decided upon an adjustment of the collective agreements concerning working time. A particular EC-restriction was incorporated in the Working Hours Act (SFS 1982:673).

This paper describes a factor analysis applied at the data of the European Union structural indicators. These are the official indicators for wealth and economic development in the European Union with main use to evaluate the outcomes of the year 2000 Lisbon goals for making the European Union the world?s strongest economy by 2010. The purpose of the data is to serve for comparing and ?learning by doing?-policies, but have, due to size and format, so far been hard to use for a good compare between member countries.

The conflict in Vaxholm was an important event since it influenced the view upon the Swedish labour market. The entire Swedish model was questioned and questions about what the concept of solidarity stands for and for whom it is meant arose.The Swedish union, Byggnads, was harshly criticised for having acted in a discriminating fashion towards den Latvian workers and the Latvian company Laval un Partneri. The debate in the media was intense.My intention with this essay was to scrutinise the arguments in one of the most prestigious newspapers in Sweden, Dagens Nyheter, and to put the argumentation into a perspective of solidarity. I wanted to investigate how the different parties argued about solidarity. One of the conclusions I drew was that Byggnads needs to question their definition of solidarity and how they wish to express that in a new world more influenced by globalisation and immigrated labours..

Research has shown that still today mostly men inhibit the managing director positions and jobs such as electricians, engineers, and road workers, which makes the work situation unequal among those work places. Another issue is that studies show that minority groups have fewer possibilities in comparison with majority inhabitants on the labour market. One reason can be that many companies and organizations lack when it comes to the recruitment process due to prejudices and the applicants for a job who has names such as Ahmed, Carlos and Ali are taken out of the process at first stage.The purpose of this research is to study how civil servants at Vägverket (Swedish Road Administration) discuss about diversity and equality. Whereas subjects such as ethnicity and gender will be illuminated..

AbstractThis paper is based on a research conducted in a medium sized company, situated in Sweden, with the intent to study possible connections regarding views of gender and the existing sex segregation within the company. How is gender constructed, and does it exist representational ideas of the sexes, that leads to restrictions for men and women to be working within different areas of the company? Why are there such few women working within the company? Through five interviews with employees within the company, three women and two men, I found answers to these questions. My thesis and the specific questions were categorized into three different themes. The first theme aims to understand the interviewees? discussions of gender and labour.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate how to reduce the high, and every decade raising, pre-clearance cost. The pre-clearance is today carried out with a brush saw and paid per labour hour. All small trees not suitable for pulpwood are removed to simplify the later work of the harvester. The study compares the economic results from thinning of four parcels each treated differently regarding harsh or light pre-clearance and extraction of only pulpwood, or both pulpwood and fuel wood. In this type of spruce stand the study indicates that a lighter pre-clearance, followed up with both pulpwood and a fuel wood extraction, has a much better economy than the traditional method of hard pre-clearance and only pulpwood extraction..

This master's thesis is about alternative career opportunities for library and information science graduates. Ever since the beginning of our education we have been interested in working outside of the traditional libraries. Now that we are about to receive our degrees in library and information science we are doubtful if the competence we have obtained is enough to meet the demands of the labour market. The employment field we have been studying in this master's thesis is information management, since this is a field that we find comparable to library and information science. Our study involves a qualitative survey amongst recruiting companies to investigate how the recruiters value different educations, competences and personal skills when they employ staff within the field of information management.

This essay discusses the problems with the high rate of long-term sickness leave among women in Sweden. It is based on interviews with six women suffering from stress-related illness. The results show that these women hardly ever recieved an explicit diagnosis and therefore did not feel that their illness was acknowledged. In the abscense of measurable symptoms they were sometimes stigmatisized and accused of simulating their problems. From this position they tried to legitimize their situation by presenting themselves as respectable women.

Summary Today energy prices are rising. As a result biomass fuel is getting more and more interesting. Wood chips is very popular, but also straw from grain production is on the table. Lunds Energi AB project a combined power and heating plant in Örtofta out of Lund. Wood chips is meant to be the main energy source, complemented by straw. In this thesis the transportation of straw for fuel is studied.

Hommage till slit och släp is a tribute and a resarchabout patterns relation to clothes. The primary goalof the project was to examine how a pattern couldchange the apperance of a garment and how thegarment?s construction and material would impactthe pattern. The formative survey was about thesparsely populated areas in the north of Sweden andhow theese areas have been treated by the swedishgovernment. The issue worked as an inspiration andmethod which I used in the patternresearch.

The aim of this thesis was to examin how librarians arepresented in the Swedish daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter.My research questions were: How are librarians and thelibrarian profession presented in articles in DagensNyheter? and What discourses can be identified in thearticles?I have analysed 69 articles from between 2012-01-01 and2013-01-01 by using discourse analysis as both theory andmethod.Three discourses emerged through the analysis: discourseabout librarians and litterature, discourse about librariansand censorship and discourse about librarians and thelabour market.The conclusions drawn from this study are that librariansare strongly associated with litterture and reading and withthe labour market. There are also clear tendencies thatlibrarians whish to change the old, stereotypical images thatthey are associated with, and do so by using humor..