Gustafsson, Anna-Karin

Both the government and social partners have recently announced new initiatives to improve the health of Swedish workers.

Gender segregation in the Swedish labour market is partly to blame for women facing a higher risk of incurring repetitive strain injuries, according to the Swedish Work Environment Authority. The agency, commissioned by the government to develop ways of helping women avoid such problems, also found that employers often lack the knowledge required to prevent such injuries.

Sweden has a tradition of high trade union density rates, but the share of Swedish workers who are members of a trade union has dropped in the last decade from 80% to 70%. This might seem high from a global perspective, but Sweden is also one of the countries where unionisation is declining most rapidly.

The three peak-level Swedish trade union organisations have together launched Union to Union, an overseas aid organisation dedicated to cooperating with and supporting trade union organisations globally.

The impact of the Laval ruling regarding posted workers and the subsequent amendments to Swedish law have been far-reaching. This article gives a short overview of the political developments in Sweden, as well as the social partners’ views on different ways of handling the new circumstances for industrial relations resulting from free movement and tougher competition.

Employers' organisations and trade unions agree that the Swedish model needs to adapt to meet changing conditions on the labour market, but have different ideas on what needs to be done. The arguments used by the social partners and an account of how the negotiations to revise the system are evolving are presented.