The Swedish labour market has developed a system were the relationship between employers and employees is in the largest extent regulated through collective agreements. A principle of the Swedish model has long been that the government should not interfere in wage setting and that the regulation on the wage settings is provided for the organisations on the labour market, however, a system of collective agreements that are generally applicable are very common in many European countries. The significance of this system is that the collective agreement is binding on all parties on the labour market which includes, both employers and employees that are members and also non-members in a trade union. A method with doctrinal and labour law in context has been used. This essay has examined how an imposition of the collective agreements with a general effect could affect the protection of workers in the Swedish model, and what kind of consequences such imposition could contribute to. Collective agreements are very important for the Swedish model and the employer has an obligation to apply conditions of collective agreements on employees that are non-members in a trade union or members in a different union. Employers who do not apply these conditions to workers can be guilty of violation of the collective agreement. In Sweden, collective agreements have a very high coverage despite the absence of collective agreements that are generally applicable. The high coverage is important because collective agreements offers workers a safer protection with more rights and opportunities to influence their workplace. In practice, it is also established that collective agreement in a workplace should be the central, and that it should have a normative effect on workers. However, the employer can bypass a few rules, which may affect workers negatively because they do not get equal rights or an equally strong protection. In order to maintain the Swedish model, a high number of trade union memberships are necessary. On the other hand, it has been shown that the number of trade union memberships has been decreased which can contribute to a diminished position on the labour market for workers and the trade unions. An adoption of collective agreements with a general effect as a complement to the system we have today would have been a good solution to include more employees. However, it can also be considered as an invasion on the Swedish model.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-62665 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Skoko, Melisa |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för ekonomistyrning och logistik (ELO) |
| 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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