A trade union, often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", such as attaining better wages and benefits, improving working conditions, improving safety standards, establishing complaint procedures, developing rules governing status of employees and protecting and increasing the bargaining power of workers.
Labour laws are those that mediate the relationship between workers, employing entities, trade unions, and the government. Collective labour law relates to the tripartite relationship between employee, employer, and union.
Collective bargaining is a process of negotiation between employers and a group of employees aimed at agreements to regulate working salaries, working conditions, benefits, and other aspects of workers' compensation and rights for workers. The interests of the employees are commonly presented by representatives of a trade union to which the employees belong. The collective agreements reached by these negotiations usually set out wage scales, working hours, training, health and safety, overtime, grievance mechanisms, and rights to participate in workplace or company affairs.
The Confederation of Professional Employees is a national trade union centre, the umbrella organisation for 13 trade unions in Sweden that organise professional and other qualified employees in both the private and the public sectors. The affiliated trade unions represent about 1.1 million employees. In 2018, the TCO affiliated unions made up 37% of all active trade union members in Sweden, making the confederation the second largest of Sweden's three major confederations. The largest TCO affiliate is Unionen with 551,000 active members in 2018. TCO is independent and not affiliated to any political party in Sweden. TCO is an affiliate of the European Trade Union Confederation and Eurocadres.
The Swedish Confederation of Professional Associations is a confederation of 26 independent professional associations in Sweden. It gathers some 940,000 members, all of whom are academics or graduate professionals with a university or college degree. The members include economists, lawyers, architects, graduate engineers, doctors, scientists, teachers and many others. A growing share of Swedish union members are affiliated to a Saco union: 1% in 1950 and 18% in 2018.
The Swedish Trade Union Confederation, commonly referred to as LO, is a national trade union centre, an umbrella organisation for fourteen Swedish trade unions that organise mainly "blue-collar" workers. The Confederation, which gathers in total about 1.5 million employees out of Sweden's 10 million people population, was founded in 1898 by blue-collar unions on the initiative of the 1897 Scandinavian Labour Congress and the Swedish Social Democratic Party, which almost exclusively was made up by trade unions. In 2019 union density of Swedish blue-collar workers was 60%, a decline by seventeen percentage points since 2006. A strongly contributing factor was the considerably raised fees to union unemployment funds in January 2007 made by the new centre-right government.
Labor unions in the United States are organizations that represent workers in many industries recognized under US labor law since the 1935 enactment of the National Labor Relations Act. Their activity today centers on collective bargaining over wages, benefits, and working conditions for their membership, and on representing their members in disputes with management over violations of contract provisions. Larger trade unions also typically engage in lobbying activities and electioneering at the state and federal level.
Unions have been compared across countries by growth and decline patterns, by violence levels, and by kinds of political activity.
Industrifacket Metall is a trade union in Sweden. It was formed in a 2006 merger between the Swedish Industrial Union (Industrifacket) and the Swedish Metalworkers' Union (Metall). Its roots in Metall trace back to 1888.
Labor relations is a field of study that can have different meanings depending on the context in which it is used. In an international context, it is a subfield of labor history that studies the human relations with regard to work in its broadest sense and how this connects to questions of social inequality. It explicitly encompasses unregulated, historical, and non-Western forms of labor. Here, labor relations define "for or with whom one works and under what rules. These rules determine the type of work, type and amount of remuneration, working hours, degrees of physical and psychological strain, as well as the degree of freedom and autonomy associated with the work." More specifically in a North American and strictly modern context, labor relations is the study and practice of managing unionized employment situations. In academia, labor relations is frequently a sub-area within industrial relations, though scholars from many disciplines including economics, sociology, history, law, and political science also study labor unions and labor movements. In practice, labor relations is frequently a subarea within human resource management. Courses in labor relations typically cover labor history, labor law, union organizing, bargaining, contract administration, and important contemporary topics.
Unemployment benefits in Sweden are payments made by the state or other authorized bodies to unemployed people. They can be divided into a voluntary scheme with income-related compensation up to a certain level, or a comprehensive scheme that provides a lower level of basic support.
The Nordic model comprises the economic and social policies as well as typical cultural practices common to the Nordic countries. This includes a comprehensive welfare state and multi-level collective bargaining based on the economic foundations of social corporatism, and a commitment to private ownership within a market-based mixed economy — with Norway being a partial exception due to a large number of state-owned enterprises and state ownership in publicly listed firms.
A collective agreement, collective labour agreement (CLA) or collective bargaining agreement (CBA) is a written contract negotiated through collective bargaining for employees by one or more trade unions with the management of a company that regulates the terms and conditions of employees at work. This includes regulating the wages, benefits, and duties of the employees and the duties and responsibilities of the employer or employers and often includes rules for a dispute resolution process.
The European Trade Union Confederation was set up in 1973 to promote the interests of working people at the European level and to represent them in the European Union institutions. It is recognized by the European Union, the Council of Europe, and the European Free Trade Association as the only representative cross-sectoral trade union organization at the European level.
The Ghent system is the name given to an arrangement in some countries whereby the main responsibility for welfare payments, especially unemployment benefits, is held by trade unions rather than a government agency. The system is named after the city of Ghent, Belgium, where it was first implemented. It is the predominant form of unemployment benefit in Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Sweden. Belgium has a hybrid or "quasi-Ghent" system, in which the government also plays a significant role in distributing benefits. In all of the above countries, unemployment funds held by unions or labour federations are regulated and/or partly subsidised by the national government concerned.
The labour movement in Sweden dates back to at least the 1850s, when Swedish workers initiated the organizing of previously spontaneous food riots into strikes, hence acting as an autonomous group.
The economy of Sweden is a highly developed export-oriented economy, aided by timber, hydropower, and iron ore. These constitute the resource base of an economy oriented toward foreign trade. The main industries include motor vehicles, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, industrial machines, precision equipment, chemical goods, home goods and appliances, forestry, iron, and steel. Traditionally, Sweden relied on a modern agricultural economy that employed over half the domestic workforce. Today Sweden further develops engineering, mine, steel, and pulp industries, which are competitive internationally, as evidenced by companies like Ericsson, ASEA/ABB, SKF, Alfa Laval, AGA, and Dyno Nobel.
The Saltsjöbad Agreement is a Swedish labour market treaty signed between the Swedish Trade Union Confederation and the Swedish Employers Association on 20 December 1938, that became a model for other agreements. The rules on industrial action have come to be regarded almost as general legal principles of conflicts between the labor market forces. The agreement cemented the Swedish social norm that the two sides shall conclude agreements without interference by government. The agreement is still in effect, with the latest changes being made in 1976.
Sectoral collective bargaining is an aim of trade unions or labor unions to reach a collective agreement that covers all workers in a sector of the economy. It contrasts to enterprise bargaining where agreements cover individual firms. Generally countries with sectoral collective bargaining have higher rates of union organisation and better coverage of collective agreements than countries with enterprise bargaining.
Collective agreement coverage or union representation refers to the proportion of people in a country population whose terms and conditions at work are made by collective bargaining, between an employer and a trade union, rather than by individual contracts. This is invariably higher than the union membership rate, because collective agreements almost always protect non-members in a unionised workplace. This means that, rather than individuals who have weaker bargaining power representing themselves in negotiations, people organise to represent each other together when negotiating for better pay and conditions in their workplace. The number of people who are covered by collective agreements is higher than the number of union members, and in many cases substantially higher, because when trade unions make collective agreements they aim to cover everyone at work, even those who have not necessarily joined for membership.
