Employers call for changes to industrial action rules

According to the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise - the country's main private sector employers' organisation - there is a growing lack of balance in the Swedish labour market. In a report issued in April 2005, the confederation proposed seven measures aimed at modernising the current rules on industrial conflict.

26 April 2005 the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise (Svenskt Näringsliv) presented the report Den svenska modellen har kantrat- the Swedish model has capsized . The author of the report is Jan-Peter Duker, Deputy Manager of Svenskt Näringsliv. There is a lack of balance unbalance on the Swedish labour market, Duker states and accounts for seven measures to be taken in order to make the current rules of the game more in line with modern times. The concept of the Swedish model means shortly that collective bargaining is carried out by independent social partners, standing free from the Government, and in a spirit of co-understanding, the so-called Saltsjöbaden spirit. This model has existed for almost 75 years and has undergone several changes. The basic parts remain however, including among other things the right to sympathy actions, which is extensive in Swedish law. Sympathy actions, or secondary actions, mean the right to take such actions to support or express sympathy with a social partner involved in a lawful industrial conflict. (SE0302102F)

The employers propose new legal rules on:

• A legal rule of proportionality, i.e. an extent and aim of conflict actions that must be in proportionality with the consequences and effects they might lead to for the enterprises and for the so-called third part (for instance, society)

• Ban the sympathy actions. Employers that are not involved in a dispute should not be forced in to others’ conflict actions.

• Establish a possibility to legal compulsory arbitration in order to force the social partners to responsible collective agreements.

• Give mediators stronger powers to postpone or annul noticed conflict actions

• Ban conflicts that are dangerous to society

• Ban organizations without collective agreements to start conflict actions in areas where collective agreements exist.

• Prohibit trade unions to take conflict actions against companies where the union has no member

• Svenskt Näringsliv now appeals to the parliamentarians and other 'responsible' politicians to propose changes in the legislation in order to, among other things achieve neutral rules for the social partners. The appeal shall be seen in the light of the current quite extensive sympathy actions carried out by Swedish trade unions to support the Finnish paper workers’ conflict in Finland. (SE0506102N)

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