Negotiations over white-collar supplementary pensions may be relaunched

In March 2001, it was announced that the SAF employers' organisation and PTK trade union cartel were preparing for a possible relaunch of negotiations over a new "contribution"-based supplementary pensions scheme for white-collar workers in the private sector. Previous talks broke down in May 1999.

In May 1999, negotiations over a new supplementary pensions scheme for Sweden's 600,000 private sector white-collar workers collapsed. The talks between the Swedish Employers' Confederation (Svenska Arbetsgivareföreningen, SAF) and the Federation of Salaried Employees in Industry and Services (Privattjänstemannakartellen, PTK) had been going on for five years (SE9908180F). In March 2001, the parties announced that they were jointly starting to make new calculations in order to arrive at possible new solutions for the pensions scheme in question. The mutual aim is to restart negotiations in early summer 2001.

The existing collective agreement on the supplementary pension scheme for salaried employees in industry and services (Industrins och handelnstilläggspension för tjänstemän, ITP), which provides a top-up to statutory pensions, was first concluded in 1976 and has been renewed several times since. Today's ITP pension is based on a system whereby fixed benefits are paid out of current contributions. In the earlier talks, SAF wanted to make the pension scheme more flexible and adaptable to the labour market. It therefore wished to establish another way of calculating the pension. The employers wanted to move to a system whereby the workers' supplementary pensions were based on the contributions that they themselves had made. SAF's final offer in the negotiations, made in May 1999, provided that all salaried workers in the private sector were to have a contribution-based supplementary retirement pension, based on a contribution of 3.8% of pay which the workers could decide for themselves where to invest.

The parties finally agreed on the idea of a new contribution-based system for the ITP. However, they could not agree on the level of the contribution. The PTK bargaining cartel, representing 28 trade unions, made a final demand for a contribution of 4.1% of pay, rejecting SAF's offer of 3.8%. Negotiations ended and many industrial relations experts stated that there would never be another chance to reach a new ITP agreement.

In its 1999 proposal, SAF sought a mixed system, whereby there would be a contribution-based scheme for incomes below SEK 282,000 per year, but the current fixed-benefit system would remain in place for incomes over that level. Now SAF wants a contribution-based system for all income levels. It is on this basis that the parties are now making new calculations, with the aim of agreeing a platform for the planned negotiations starting in June.