This thesis aims to analyze whether Swedish law in its current form complies with the provisions in the newly adopted EU Directive on Minimum Wages (Minimum Wage Directive). To conduct this analysis, the thesis has sought to answer the question of whether Swedish workers have a right to demand a spe-cific minimum wage level, as well as assess if the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) could interpret the Minimum Wage Directive as entailing such a right.The analysis of Swedish workers’ right to demand a minimum wage concluded that such a right is bestowed upon only a small number of workers, under specific conditions. Due to a lack of legislation on wages, the worker in question must work at a workplace where there is a collective agreement in which a minimum wage level is set. It has been found that out of the 700 collective agreements on the Swedish labor market, only 250 have such provisions. In order to demand access to said minimum wage, the worker must either be a member of the con-tracting labor union, which subsequently makes them party to the collective agreement under the Swedish Co-Determination Act, or be in a position where the provisions of the collective agreement are considered part of their individual employment contract. Workers at workplaces where there are no collective agree-ments in place, on the other hand, are unable to demand access to minimum wages. It has been found that there are certain legal safeguards ensuring that these workers do not receive unfair wages, suffer from wage discrimination, or get forced into labor under exploiting conditions. These safeguards however do not entail the right to demand a minimum wage.Furthermore, the thesis concludes that there are sufficient indicators to sup-port the claim that the CJEU most likely will refrain from interpreting the Mini-mum Wage Directive as entailing a right for workers to demand minimum wages. Interpreting the directive in this way would result in an obligation for member states like Sweden, where the provisions of the collective agreements do not ap-ply to all workers, to either impose statutory minimum wages or declare collective agreements universally applicable. This would constitute an interpretation contra legem, as the directive explicitly states that nothing in it shall be construed as imposing such obligations. In previous cases, the CJEU has been unwilling to interpret secondary legislation in contrast to its wording, even in cases where there might be valid reasons to do so. Apart from this, it has been concluded that such an interpretation of the directive would interfere with the overall context of the directive, the purpose the directive was made to fulfill, as well as the legislative history preceding the adopting of the directive. According to case-law from the CJEU, these are factors that are considered when the court is faced with the task of interpreting a directive. It should also be noted that interpreting the Minimum Wage Directive as entailing a right for workers to demand minimum wages has been found to be incompatible with article 153.5 of the Treaty on the Function-ing of the European Union (TFEU), which exempts matters regarding pay from the legislative competence of the EU.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-214452 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Karkehabadi, Vida |
| 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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