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Swedish fire service sued over affirmative action

Södertörn's fire department, just south of Stockholm, is being sued for actively choosing to hire women and people with foreign background, according to Sveriges Radio (SR).

Published: 8 July 2011 10:42 CEST

Swedish fire service sued over affirmative action

The fire deparment’s gender and ethnicity quota became an unpleasant surprise for Simon Wallmark, who was informed that despite having trained as a firefighter, he was not encouraged to apply for a summer job, on account of being Swedish and male.

“The response I got from Södertörn was that I wasn’t qualified to apply for the summer jobs, because the jobs were reserved for women and people with an immigrant background,” said Simon Wallmark to SR.

He agrees that there is a need for more women and immigrants in the field, but argues that the recruiting should be done some other way.

Out of the 32 people finally hired by the fire department, 10 lacked the relevant education for the job.

The case is now being taken to court by Stockholm-based Centre for Justice (Centrum för Rättvisa).

“This is a case of a Swedish man who has been denied the same chances as others, just on account of being a Swedish man” Anna Rogalska-Hedlund, lawyer at Centre for Justice, told SR.

The agency has past experience of cases against affirmative action, and are now demanding 100,000 kronor ($16,000) for the discrimination, on Wallmark’s behalf.

The fire department’s manager Anders Edstam has no regrets about the recruiting, explaining that they made a conscious choice to include women and immigrants, and that those recruits lacking the necessary education will be receiving it through the job.

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'Sweden should apologise to Tornedalian minority': Truth commission releases report

Stockholm’s policy of assimilation in the 19th and 20th centuries “harmed the minority and continues to hinder the defence of its language, culture and traditional livelihoods,” the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Tornedalians, Kvens and Lantalaiset said in an article published in Sweden’s main daily Dagens Nyheter.

“Amends must be made in order to move forward,” it said, adding that “acknowledging the historic wrongdoings” should be a first step.

The commission, which began work in June 2020, was to submit a final report to the government on Wednesday.

Tornedalen is a geographical area in northeastern Sweden and northwestern Finland. The Tornedalian, Kven and Lantalaiset minority groups are often grouped under the name Tornedalians, who number around 50,000 in Sweden.

The commission noted that from the late 1800s, Tornedalian children were prohibited from using their mother tongue, meänkieli, in school and forced to use Swedish, a ban that remained in place until the 1960s.

From the early 1900s, some 5,500 Tornedalian children were sent away to Lutheran Church boarding schools “in a nationalistic spirit”, where their language and traditional dress were prohibited.

Punishments, violence and fagging were frequent at the schools, and the Tornedalian children were stigmatised in the villages, the commission said.

“Their language and culture was made out to be something shameful … (and) their self-esteem and desire to pass on the language to the next generation was negatively affected.”

The minority has historically made a living from farming, hunting, fishing and reindeer herding, though their reindeer herding rights have been limited over the years due to complexities with the indigenous Sami people’s herding rights.

“The minority feels that they have been made invisible, that their rights over their traditional livelihoods have been taken away and they now have no power of influence,” the commission wrote.

It recommended that the meänkieli language be promoted in schools and public service broadcasting, and the state “should immediately begin the process of a public apology”.

The Scandinavian country also has a separate Truth Commission probing discriminatory policies toward the Sami people.

That report is due to be published in 2025.

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