Sweden - Labor
The labor force numbered 4.4 million persons in 2000. In that year, approximately 74% of the workforce was in the service sector, with 24% engaged in industry, and the remaining 2% in agriculture. The unemployment rate in 2002 was 4%.
In 2002, about 80% of Swedish wage earners are members of trade unions, and within certain industrial branches the percentage is even higher. The first unions in Sweden were organized in the 1870s, but for a long time the movement remained numerically weak relative to the rest of industrialized Europe. At the end of 1992, however, the Swedish Trade Union Confederation, which is closely allied to the Social Democratic Party, had 2.23 million members and was thus the largest organization of any kind in Sweden. Other major groups include the Swedish Confederation of Salaried Employees and the Swedish Confederation of Professional Associations. The trade union movement is based on voluntary membership, and there is neither closed shop nor union shop. The Swedish Employers Confederation is the principal employer organization.
Agreements between employers and trade unions are generally worked out by negotiation. Public mediators or mediation commissions intervene if necessary. A labor court, made up of three impartial members and five representing employers, workers, and salaried employees, has jurisdiction over the application and interpretation of collective agreements already signed and may impose damages on employers, trade unions, or trade union members violating a contract. For many years, an overwhelming majority of the court's decisions have been unanimous, and since the end of the 1930s industrial peace has generally prevailed. In 1997, management and labor agreed to a new negotiating framework that has decreased strikes and increased wages. Swedish law requires employee representation on company boards of directors. A law passed in 1983 introduced employee funds, partly funded by contributions from profits of all Swedish companies, which give unions and employees equity in companies, while providing the companies with investment capital.
The legal minimum age for full-time employment is 16 years old. The regular workweek cannot exceed 40 hours, and overtime is limited to 48 hours over a four-week period and a total of 200 hours a year. However, these regulations may be modified by collective bargaining agreement. A minimum of five weeks of holiday with pay is stipulated by law. There is no national minimum wage: Wages are negotiated in collective bargaining agreements. Workers, even at the lowest end of the pay scale, are able to provide a decent standard of living for their families. Health and safety standards are very high and are stringently enforced.
This is Yoo-Kyung Yang from Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Sweden. I am looking for some materials for those requests below. I kindly ask your help to provide what I am looking for. Would you please help me and provide those datas in English for me?
1. Your government (including a local authority) has a system to subsidize labor unions In this regard, we kindly request you to provide recent data on the amounts, targets and other details of the above- government subsidy.
2. We kindly request he U.S. and Japan to provide data on the current situation of full-time union workers in small-medium sized companies(SMEs) with less than 300 workers, particularly less than 100 ones and funding sources for their pays.
* Full-time union worker refers to a worker who is allowed to work for a labor union on a full time basis according to the consent of a user or collective bargaining agreement instead of providing a service stated in a labor contract.
3. According to the labor administration center of Japan, as of 1997, the number of full- time union workers was 2.2 in labor unions having less than 299 members on average. In addition to recently undated data, we kindly request more specified statistics, if any, which classify the union member numbers into a granular level such as less than 30, 30-49, 50-99, 100-299, 300-999, 1,000-9,999 and more than 10,000.
As for the labor unions of SMEs with less than 100workers, it is not sufficient to pay a full time union worker only with union dues. In the statistics, however, there are full-time union workers in those small-sized companies and thus, we kindly request you to provide specific examples about how full-time union workers are paid from which financial source For instance, we would like to know whether labor unions in SMEs collect more amounts of union dues than big companies; or whether more than 2 labor unions in the same region are allied for more efficient management.
4. In the U.S., there is a shop steward or committee person in a factory or company. We would like to know whether there is a full-time shop steward or committee person even in a company with less than 100 union members. If any, we kindly request you to provide specific cases on how those full-time union workers are financially rewarded for their other activities such as enlarging or promoting a union besides time-off activities during the working hour,ie, collective bargaining, industrial safety and health activities and etc., based on the collective bargaining agreement.
Thank you very much for your help.
Sincerely,
Yoo-Kyung Yang
Embassy of the Republic of Korea