Government to act on pay bargaining

It became clear in March 1999 that long-running talks had failed over a possible joint approach on pay bargaining between Sweden's main employers' confederation and three trade union confederations. The government is now preparing a bill that will provide guidelines for negotiations in the future.

On 15 March 1999 a report was submitted to Mona Sahlin, Minister at the Ministry of Industry and Commerce. It was the final result of the work of the two special investigators who had been commissioned by the government in 1999 to look into the possibility of the social partners agreeing on new rules for pay bargaining and negotiating procedures. The investigators were Ingvar Carlsson, ex-Prime Minister, and Svante Öberg, director-general of the National Institute of Economic Research and the author of a report on mediation and pay bargaining that appeared in November 1998 (SE9901135N). The central social partner organisations had been holding talks over over a possible joint approach on pay bargaining during the winter of 1998/9 (SE9901135N).

The task of Mr Carlsson and Mr Öberg was to investigate whether the social partners would be prepared to agree to the setting up of a mediation institute with enhanced powers, or alternatively to draw up a joint agreement on the form to be taken by negotiations. A third possibility was for the two sides to accept the idea of future procedural agreements based on bargaining cartels, as occurs in the industry sector (SE9703110N).

However, these goals were not met. In their report, the investigators noted that there was much disagreement between the parties on pay bargaining and negotiating procedures.

The report did state, however, that the Swedish Employers' Confederation (Svenska Arbetsgivareföreningen, SAF) and the three trade union confederations - the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (Landsorganisationen, LO), the Swedish Confederation of Professional Associations (Sveriges Akademikers Centralorganisation, SACO) and the Swedish Confederation of Professional Employees (Tjänstemännens Centralorganisation, TCO) - were united in their views on matters of skills development and life-long learning for employees.

Mr Carlsson and Mr Öberg concluded that "it would helpful if the government could take an initiative to stimulate and make it easier for the social partners to collaborate". Two days after the report was released, Minister Sahlin said that new legislative rules on bargaining procedures and mediation were being prepared, ready for parliamentary proceedings in autumn 1999.

This was the last opportunity for the social partners to draw up rules for bargaining procedure on their own. Since the general election in September 1998 there had been considerable activity between the confederations without the involvement of governmental representatives and the government had also sought to initiate various discussions in special groups with representatives from both sides of industry.