United we stand, divided we sue: Collective access to court for labour and social security claims in Sweden

Abstract

While Sweden has long enjoyed a solid reputation for protecting weaker parties through a comprehensive welfare state and a labour market governed by collective bargaining, its system for enforcing these rights has rested upon the public authorities and the social partners rather than on judicial proceedings. Against this background, this article examines the legal avenues for bringing collective actions and obtaining collective redress before courts in social security and labour law cases in Sweden. It finds that the relevant legislation does not explicitly provide for collective redress in either field. Within social security law, collective access to court is practically excluded, whereas in labour law, the current procedural framework can only with difficulty be construed as lending itself to measures of collective redress, and then only with some significant legal and practical limitations. While indicative of the general situation as regards collective redress in Sweden, whose legislation on group actions has been criticised for its toothlessness and has been put to little practical use, this also suggests that the tradition of collectivism in the Swedish social security and labour market systems still does not translate into collectivism in judicial redress.