“We’ve been working 40-hour weeks for 50 years,” LO’s chair, Johan Lindholm, told the TT newswire. “Since then, society and the labour market has developed at rocket speed, but the 40-hour week has remained unchanged.”
“It’s time to cut the working week for workers in Sweden.”
LO, which is an umbrella organisation for 13 trade unions in Sweden, is planning on demanding central negotiations with employers belonging to the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise (Svenskt Näringsliv). LO has not provided details of the specific figure it is aiming for, but it has carried out a study looking into the possibility of shortening the working week to 35 hours.
According to Veli-Pekka Säikkälä, the organisation’s negotiating secretary, it should be possible to shorten the working week while retaining pay and future real salary increases, even if the possible scope for pay rises shrinks.
Svenskt Näringsliv, however, is not interested in discussing the issue centrally in a deal which could affect all 13 of LO’s member unions.
“No,” its vice-CEO Mattias Dahl told the TT newswire.
“The timing is also very odd as the last few years have been marred by crises,” he said. “For us it would be very odd to sit down and discuss [a shorter working week].”
Industriarbetsgivarna, the employer organisation for the industrial sector, was equally dismissive, with its head of negotiations Per Widolf saying that it would result in lower salaries and fewer jobs, make Swedish industry less competitive and lower the amount of money going into the welfare state.
“We’re not going to shorten the working week,” he said, calling LO’s demand “tone deaf.”
Both employer organisations highlighted the fact that discussions on working hours are part of individual negotiations between unions and employers within individual industries, and said that they believe that central negotiations for the whole labour market don’t make sense.
“This issue is too important and too large to be discussed at an industry level,” LO’s chair, Johan Lindholm said. “That’s why those of us in the mother organisations need to step in and take the responsibility needed for finding solutions together.”
“We’re going to be told that this is impossible. It’s not.”
Sweden’s Scandinavian neighbours, Denmark and Norway, have both had 37 hour working weeks for years, he added.
The Social Democrats agree that the working week should be shortened.
“The day that there’s an agreement between both sides we will take responsibility for the political side of things,” the party’s labour market spokesperson Ardalan Shekarabi said.
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