Arbete befrämjar hälsa och välstånd... : en studie av arbetslöshetspolitiken i Uddevalla 1918-1932

Sammanfattning: This essay deals with Swedish unemployment politics during the period 1918-1932, and can be seen as a contribution to earlier research of how the policies, established by the State Unemployment Commission, was carried out at a local level. This study bears upon  Uddevalla municipality, a town in the southwestern part of Sweden, which had about 13,700 inhabitants in 1920. The research was conducted in Uddevalla municipality archives, and the sources used are above all municipal records and documents from the local unemployment committee. The measures taken by the local committee to reduce the effects of unemployment have then been compared with the directives of the State Unemployment Commission. The survey shows that the local unemployment committee, at least during the first half of the 1920s, was very keen to follow the directives of the State Unemployment Commission, and they also tried to charge the municipality's economy as little as possible. The local policy was often even more restrictive than the demands from the State Unemployment Commission. During a few years in the middle of the 1920s, when the unemployment was relatively low, most of the unemployed did not recieve any help at all. The restrictive policy, however, led to an increasing distress among the unemployed, and the poor relief had to give financial help to a lot of unemployed and their families. The unemployment committee became then a little bit more active and generouos in its policy towards the unemployed. The political majority in Uddevalla municipality was changed in the period, but the changes that occurred in the local unemployment policy does not appear to be linked to political governance, but rather to the untenable situation of the unemployed which was no longer to ignore.