Trade Unions in Sweden

Act on on Codetermination at Work

The Act on Co-determination at Work contains provisions on the right of association covering:

• The right to belong to an employer or employee organization.
• The right to derive benefit from membership of such an organization.
• The right to work to establish a trade union organization.
• The right of association is inviolable. This means that an employee may not be prevented from applying for membership of a trade union organization, utilizing this membership or working to establish such an organization.

Priority of interpretation means that one party’s standpoint applies in the event of a dispute until the dispute has been settled by a court. In general it is the employer’s interpretation that applies in the first hand. The trade union organizations have, however, through the Act on Co-determination at Work, been given some priority of interpretation in pay disputes and disputes concerning obligation to work.

The Collective Agreement

A collective agreement is a written, signed agreement between the employee organization on the one hand and the employer organization or employer on the other. In order for it to be a collective agreement it is also required that the agreement covers the relationship between employer and employee and includes obligations for the parties. As soon as these formal requirements are fulfilled, it is a collective agreement even if only one of the parties has signed the minutes of the negotiation. Rules concerning collective agreements can be found in the Act on Co-determination at Work.

Concluding a collective pay agreement entails, in simplified terms, that the trade union organization sells industrial peace for a guaranteed wage and other conditions of employment for the period of the agreement.

The function of the collective agreements

The provisions of a collective agreement must be followed. A person who is in breach of a collective agreement is liable subsequently to rectify this. The employer may also be liable to pay a substantial amount in damages.
The collective agreement automatically binds both the members of the trade union and the companies that are members of the employers’ organization concluding the agreement.

A person who is not a member of the trade union usually has no rights under the collective agreement. The fact that, despite this, the employer applies the same rules to everyone is because he would otherwise be liable for damages in relation to the trade union organization. The damages payable to the trade union is usually in that case at least equivalent to the gain made by the employer by paying non-union members wages that are too low. Those who are not members of the trade union do not receive damages in the event of a breach of the collective agreement.

National agreements and local agreements

The collective pay agreements in Sweden are usually national agreements. They are concluded by trade unions with the employer’s trade organization. The central trade unions have various national agreements for different industries. It is not very common to conclude central agreements for only one company. A subsidiary agreement with the same contents as the national agreement is concluded with employers who are not members of an employers’ organization.

The national agreements are often supplemented by local collective agreements. About 90 per cent of the employees in Sweden are protected by collective agreements.