Do public sector industrial relations challenge the Swedish model?

Abstract

This article discusses recent developments in public sector labour relations in Sweden from a historical, gender and power relations perspective. The main question is whether these trends challenge the established Swedish industrial relations system. Our point of departure – yet chronologically also the point of arrival – is the Swedish Municipal Workers’ Union, Kommunal’s, exit from the coordinated wage setting model within the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (Landsorganisationen, LO) in 2015/2016. The immediate reason was that Kommunal, representing one-third of the LO members, including many low-paid women, turned down the LO’s proposal on a general wage increase for low-wage groups. Instead, Kommunal urged to upgrade wages for a specific member group, the auxiliary nurses. This broke an almost uninterrupted 20-year-long period of labour market cooperation and coordination that was introduced in 1997 through the so-called Industry Agreement (Industriavtalet). This agreement was launched in the wake of the deep financial crisis in the early 1990s, and the neoliberal move towards a complete decentralization of pay negotiations. How should this move by Kommunal be interpreted? Why, and when, has the centralized system become a straitjacket for Kommunal, when for decades it seemingly was a precondition for both private and public union strength?