Do public sector industrial relations challenge the Swedish model?

This article discusses recent developments in public sector labour relations in Sweden from a historical, gender and power relations perspective. The main question is whether these trends challenge the established Swedish industrial relations system. Our point of departure - yet chronologically also...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Labor history 2018-01, Vol.59 (1), p.87-104
Main Authors: Thörnquist, Annette, Thörnqvist, Christer
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Centralization
collective bargaining
Cooperation
Coordination
Decentralization
Economic crisis
female occupations discrepancies
Followership and Organizational Resilience
Gender relations
Government employees
Labor market
Labor relations
Labor unions
male vs
male vs. female occupations discrepancies
Medarbetarskap och organisatorisk resiliens (FORE)
Neoliberalism
Nurses
Power
Public sector
Public sector industrial relations
The Swedish model
Wage determination
Wages & salaries
Women
Working women
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Summary:This article discusses recent developments in public sector labour relations in Sweden from a historical, gender and power relations perspective. The main question is whether these trends challenge the established Swedish industrial relations system. Our point of departure - yet chronologically also the point of arrival - is the Swedish Municipal Workers' Union, Kommunal's, exit from the coordinated wage setting model within the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (Landsorganisationen, LO) in 2015/2016. The immediate reason was that Kommunal, representing one-third of the LO members, including many low-paid women, turned down the LO's proposal on a general wage increase for low-wage groups. Instead, Kommunal urged to upgrade wages for a specific member group, the auxiliary nurses. This broke an almost uninterrupted 20-year-long period of labour market cooperation and coordination that was introduced in 1997 through the so-called Industry Agreement (Industriavtalet). This agreement was launched in the wake of the deep financial crisis in the early 1990s, and the neoliberal move towards a complete decentralization of pay negotiations. How should this move by Kommunal be interpreted? Why, and when, has the centralized system become a straitjacket for Kommunal, when for decades it seemingly was a precondition for both private and public union strength?
ISSN:0023-656X
1469-9702
1469-9702
DOI:10.1080/0023656X.2017.1375597