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 the integrity of their trade through the increased bargaining power wielded by solidarity among workers.
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 Union of Clerical and Technical Employees in Industry was the largest trade union for white-collar workers in Sweden.
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.
The Building Maintenance Workers' Union is a trade union in Sweden.
The Swedish Commercial Employees' Union, is Sweden's third-largest blue-collar union, with some 145,000 members, of whom around 25,000 are retired. Women make up over 70 percent of its membership.
The Swedish Food Workers' Union is a trade union representing workers in the food and drink industries in Sweden.
The Swedish Union for Service and Communications Employees is a trade union in Sweden.
The Swedish Union of Commercial Salaried Employees was a trade union in Sweden. It had a membership of 160,000 and represented workers in a variety of industries, ranging from wholesaling, transport, freight forwarding, civil aviation and travel agencies to retailing, media companies and private dental practice.
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 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.
GS is a trade union in Sweden representing workers in the media, forestry and woodworking industries.
The Swedish Association of Graduate Engineers, Sveriges ingenjörer, is a trade union and professional association in Sweden, gathering 160,000 members.
The union density or union membership rate conveys the number of trade union members who are employees as a percentage of the total number of employees in a given industry or country. This is normally lower than collective agreement coverage rate, which refers to all people whose terms of work are collectively negotiated. Trade unions bargain with employers to improve pay, conditions, and decision-making in workplaces; higher rates of union density within an industry or country will generally indicate higher levels of trade union bargaining power, lower rates of density will indicate less bargaining power.
TULL-KUST is a trade union that organises employees in the customs service and coast guard of Sweden.
The Swedish Civil Administration's Employees' Union was a trade union representing lower-ranking civil servants in Sweden.
The Swedish Prison Employees' Union (Swedish: Svenska Vårdpersonalförbundet was a trade union representing prison staff in Sweden.
The Employees' Union of State Power Stations was a trade union representing power station workers in Sweden.
