Sweden: a trade union front creaking on the eve of negotiations

This is something that had not been seen for 20 years. On 21 October the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) announced that it would not be coordinating the demands of its 14 member unions (representing a total of 3 million employees) in the negotiations planned for 2016, after failing to reach an agreement as regards salary priorities. This decision is worrying for the employers’ confederation Svenskt Nâringsliv which hopes that this disagreement does not have a long term impact on the primacy of negotiation in industry. This could well be a more deep-rooted trend, most notably because of recent evolution in the labour market.
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Differing approaches. Since 2007, negotiations within the LO have mainly been organised to deal with the issue of low salaries and that of equality been men and women. The 14 member unions agreed on a chief objective of reducing the difference between male and female salaries by 6% by 2028. They began, however, to have different views on how this would be achieved, and a number of disagreements arose during discussions, the main one regarding salary demands in sectors in which workers are predo

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