Industrial relations in Sweden

Union organizations, collective bargaining structure, collective bargaining at cross-industry level, bargaining at sectoral level, bargaining in companies, employees representatives bodies  all you need to know about the industrial relations system in Sweden is in this fiche.

A few figures

About 70 percent of Swedish employees are affiliated with a union, one of the highest rates in the OECD countries.  It was more than 80 percent 15 years ago but a center-right government came to power and reduced unions’ role in unemployment insurance, which led to a drop in membership – followed by an upsurge these past 3 years.  Collective bargaining coverage is around 88 percent.

Union organizations

Financially speaking, unions are very powerful: since they were founded, they’ve accumulated a lot of capitals to face possible labor disputes.  Thus, LO has something like €2.5 billion and TCO 500 million, invested in financial markets or the real estate market. …