The purpose of this essay is to examine whether the Swedish rules on pay auditing fulfill their aim. It also analyses the European Commission’s proposal for a directive on pay transparency and its possible effects on the Swedish pay audit rules and labour law model. Lastly the thesis discusses whether the proposed directive would help eliminate the gender wage gap in Sweden. Through a study of governmental and union reports, it can be concluded that employers failing to comply with pay audit regulation is a prevalent issue. Altogether, this shortcoming can largely be contributed to a general lack of knowledge amongst employers regarding the rules and a lack of supervision from the authorities. This essay also investigates how pay audit regulation has affected Sweden’s efforts on eliminating the gender pay gap. The country’s small and medium sized companies show a maximum of a five percent difference in pay between men and women performing comparable work, these small differences make it difficult for employers to conduct pay audits and statistically show any differences in wages. Additionally, pay audit regulation is weakened by employers who use competitive markets as an excuse to explain differences in pay as such methods only serve to uphold the gender pay imbalance. Lastly, the essay shows that the European Commission’s proposed directive on pay transparency would require Sweden to make numerous considerable amendments to both its constitution, procedural labor law rules as well as its rules on pay audits. As an EU-wide directive covering a variety of different labour law models, the proposal is far from perfect for Sweden. Its adoption would limit the autonomy of Swedish labour market partners to negotiate and decide wages. In conclusion, state involvement though legislation would have a considerable impact on the fine balance of the current Swedish labour law model.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-201730 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Törnlund, Alice |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Juridiska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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