An example of a conflict which highlighted the difficulties in determining what constitutes a dismissal and what constitutes a redeployment took place in 2015, where employees at a supermarket in Örebro were given new employment contracts with fewer weekly working hours. The workers felt pressured to sign the new contracts and the case eventually ended up in the labour court. According to the Commercial Employees' Union, the workers were in effect dismissed, and that the order of priority rules should have been complied with. But the employer argued that the workers were only redeployed, and that therefore no consideration to the order of priority rules had to be paid. The labour court ruled in favour of the employer.

The ruling has sparked a fierce debate as many unions feared that, as a result, employers would start 'redeploying' workers systematically in order to reduce their working hours. This fear has been addressed in the recent social partner agreement on changes to the Employment protection act (currently in the process of being redrafted into a legal amendment). According to the amended law, planned to come into force on 30 June 2022, in the event of a reorganisation whereby one or more employees in an operating unit (among those with the same or equivalent work tasks) are offered reassignment to new positions that only entails a reduced employment rate (and no change of tasks), the employer must observe the following rules:

• Employees with a shorter period of employment shall be offered redeployment before employees with a longer period of employment.
• An offer with a lower employment rate must be submitted before an offer with a higher employment rate.