All LO unions to make work environment demands

In January 2004, the blue-collar Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) decided that all its member trade unions should submit a uniform set of demands for an improved work environment in the 2004 sectoral collective bargaining round .

In 2003, the Swedish Electricians' Union (Elektrikerförbundet) and the Swedish Electric Contractors' Association (Svenska Elektriska Installatörsorganisationen, EIO) negotiated a new collective agreement. The talks were complicated by the union's demands for improved working conditions, claiming that its members working in the building sector were suffering excessive stress. The employers would not concede on this point and the electricians started industrial action. However, the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (Landsorganisationen, LO) intervened, stating that the stress issue should be taken up at a higher and more general level, and thus excluded for the time being from the electrician's bargaining agenda. This enabled a new agreement to be concluded in June 2003 (SE0308101N).

Against this background, on 26 January 2004, the LO board decided that all its affiliated (blue-collar) trade unions should make a uniform set of work environment demands (SE0401105F) to their respective employers' associations in the 2004 bargaining round, as follows:

• national sector-level collective agreements should stipulate the provision by the social partners on a joint basis of training and education on work environment issues;

• sectoral agreements should lay down rules on increased trade union influence in the planning of the staffing process;

• local agreements should be negotiated in every workplace on systematic joint activities on the work environment and the rehabilitation of sick employees;

• within each bargaining unit (metalworking, commerce, food industry etc) a working group should be set up to follow the government's efforts to make parts of the current work environment and rehabilitation legislation 'optional'- ie capable of being over-ridden by collectively agreed provisions. At present, the legislation in this area is 'compulsory' and collective agreements cannot supplant it. The aim is that the social partners should take over responsibility for all or some areas covered by the relevant legislation; and

• during the term of the new sectoral agreements, local collective agreements should be reached on the introduction in companies of a 'quality-controlled' occupational health service.

The 2004 sectoral bargaining round (SE0310104F) opened in December 2003-January 2004 with the social partners in the engineering industry exchanging demands. The agreement proposed by the engineering employers, grouped in the Teknikarbetsgivarna coordinating body, contains no new provisions on work environment issues (SE0401104F).