Agency by exit: Swedish nurses and the “Not below 24,000” movement

Abstract

a b s t r a c t Hirschman's (1970) concepts of exit, voice and loyalty can be reworked to add further nuances to the understanding of labour agency. Agency by exit is of interest in demonstrating how agency is conditioned by structures and context that constrain and enable successful action. It may start as individual acts of coping and then enable and empower more collective actions of reworking and resistance. Agency by exit thereby expands our understanding of what strategies of coping, reworking and resistance entail. We base our arguments on a case study of the ''Not below 24,000" movement among nurse students and newly graduated nurses for acceptable entry wages in Sweden. The movement has succeeded in raising the entry wage for a number of newly graduated nurses by turning individual and collective agency by exit into structural power. While the movement has managed to shake power relations, it has not fully changed the rules of the game.

Health Institutions, Temporary Work Agencies, and the Mobility Power of Nurses

“…Using agency workers is another option for managing mobility when there are problems in securing enough permanent staff (Smith 2006). Work-effort bargaining and mobility-effort bargaining largely overlap Hirschman's (1970) conceptualization of voice and exit and the way this actor-based approach is applied in management studies (see Kiil & Knutsen 2016). In short, exit may follow if voice does not succeed, and threatened exit lies in the borderline between voice and exit.…”

Re-embedding agency at the workplace scale: Workers and labour control in Glasgow call centres

“…8. Kiil and Knutsen (2016) identify a form of 'agency by exit' linked to the case of Swedish graduate nurses and the 'Not below 24,000' movement. In striving for this baseline wage, campaigns were coordinated to encourage graduates not to accept jobs paying below 24,000 SK in the Swedish health sector.…”

“…In addition, those with career histories of call centre employment were often perceived as uncommitted to the role due to their propensity to 'hop' from one centre to another in the Glasgow area. This reflects the second indeterminacy of labour in terms of its mobility between firms (Kiil and Knutsen, 2016;Smith, 2006) which is perceived to be higher among more experienced call centre workers (in particular those who have shown a willingness to work in many different operations). By contrast, management spoke positively of younger workers, emphasising their malleable, committed nature ('some centres will tell you ''never take a school leaver'' -cobblers!…”

“…This again reflects capital's need to accommodate and retain potentially mobile workers through forms of workplace compromise (Kiil and Knutsen, 2016 8 ; Smith, 2006). In general, adjustments to regimes of discipline and reward may be interpreted to have 'mellowed' in line with the improved contractual status of workers in Scotland's call centre industry as a whole (Taylor and Anderson, 2012).…”

Samfunnsgeografi

“…I noen tilfeller kan summen av mange individuelle handlinger endre premissene for politiske strukturer, slik James Scott (1985) beskrev i sin bok Weapons of the weak om motstandsformer blant småbønder. Men vi kan også finne eksempler i en norsk kontekst, som når migrasjon endrer den partipolitiske velgerbalansen i et land eller når svenske sykepleiere i tusentall tar seg jobb i Norge og dermed legger press på svenske arbeidsgivere for å heve lønningene (Kiil og Knutsen 2016).…”