In June 2016, Unionen, Sweden’s private sector union, concluded a ‘strategic’ cooperation agreement with its corresponding German body, IG Metall (metals and electronics), so that Unionen can capitalize on IG Metall’s experience with digital working. The goal is to pre-empt the shocks that the new economy may provoke especially by way of developing a common communications tool for organizing this new form of manpower.
A booming sector and a new set of challenges. In Sweden the data indicates that roughly 737,000, or 12% of the active labor force, currently depend on ‘digital platform’ based work and that 24% of the active labor force would welcome working in this area. Unionen thus wants to take this segment into account and quickly position itself in this sector. In actual fact for Unionen it is a question of regulating a sector that is currently unregulated … as well as filling an empty trade union space. “
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