Defend the Swedish model!

The Swedish Labour Court (Arbetsdomstolen or AD) announced on December 2nd its judgment in the so called Laval case (Case A 268/04). According to the AD judgment the two Swedish trade unions the Swedish Building Workers’s union (Byggnads) and the Swedish Electrical Workers Union (Elektrikerna) should pay 2.5 million SEK in damage compensation and costs of trial to the Latvian construction company Laval as a consequence of the conflict in Vaxholm autumn 2004.

First level AD judged that the conflict between Byggnads and Laval is legal and does not need to be interrupted. Five years later the same court decides that we now should pay a large compensation. Today’s judgment contradicts any common sense. It is unbelievable that the union should pay compensation, when we have applied the applicable Swedish law and the decision in the AD, says Hans Tilly, who is the president of Byggnads in a comment to the judgment.

At the same time AD has concluded that Laval company has not been able to verify that it had suffered any economic damage as a consequence of the conflict. Thus the trade unions do not need to pay compensation for economic loss.

The court was split. Four out of the seven members stand behind the judgment. In the minority was the vice president, who considers that the unions should pay nothing at all.

The AD judgment in the Laval case is very serious and will in its prolongation cause large impacts for Swedish employees. Now, when trade unions arbitrary may have to pay large compensations it will be very difficult to work for fair conditions for foreign construction workers, says Hans Tilly.

But what is even worse in the whole process, from the ECJ’s judgment to the government proposal of a Laval bill, is that the Laval case opens for wage dumping, Hans Tilly continues.

A few weeks ago the Minister of Labour Sven Otto Littorin presented a bill due to the ECJ’s rejection of the Swedish collective bargaining model, after that the AD had asked for guidance from the ECJ.

Among all things Littorin proposes that the right to take industrial actions will be greatly circumvented, and that foreign collective agreements or legislation should be applicable on the Swedish labour market if they fulfill pre-decided minimum requests concerning wage and other working conditions.

Every day we meet companies that stretch the working conditions and which in the collective agreement give one level of wage, but in practice pay a lower wage to the construction workers. A dumping of wages and conditions is ongoing on the labour market today. The risk is that companies which follow the rules will be set out of competition by companies that pay less attention to the working conditions and pays lower salary, says Hans Tilly.

It is self-evident that Byggnads and Elektrikerna should refuse to pay any compensation to the Laval company as they have not broken any Swedish legislation. Byggnads requested Laval to sign a Swedish collective agreement, and when the company refused Byggnads has put the workplace under blockade. Soon afterward Elektrikerna started a sympathy action. All this was fully in conformity with the so called Lex Britannia, which the parliament acted in 1991. When did it become a crime to apply valid Swedish legislation? Which are laws induces compensation to apply?

It is also self-evident that Byggnads and Elektrikerna and the whole Swedish trade union movement should refuse to subordinate themselves to the ECJ’s anti-trade union judgment in the Laval case and with all possible means fight against the anti-trade union legislation changes the Reinfeldt-led alliance government now (with ill-concealed delight) have put on the parliament table.

The EU has no right what so ever to meddle with the Swedish labour market model. In the referendum concerning the EU membership 15 years ago guarantees were given from the present minister of Foreign relations Carl Bildt, the social democrat leader at that time Ingvar Carlsson, leaders of the Swedish industry as well as from the LO (Swedish TUC) and TCO (Swedish “white-collar” TUC) that an eventual membership in the EU should not change what so ever the collective bargaining system or the trade unions right to take industrial actions. As citizens we were told that we had got these guarantees in the negotiation process.

This very day of the 2 December at 10.21 the LO president Wanja Lundby Wedin (also the acting president of ETUC) claimed in an e-mail from her fellow-worker Anders Larsson that “Sweden got guarantees before the membership in the EU that we should have our model untouched”.

When, if not at this moment, should the trade unions and the political leaders make use of these guarantees, and to inform concerned EU institutions which legislation and rules that are valid on the Swedish labour market. These legislation and rules are decided by the Swedish parliament and not by non-elected bureaucrats and perverters of the law in Brussels and Luxemburg. Defend the Swedish model.

Gösta Torstensson
Editor Critical eu-facts
www.nejtilleu.se

(Translation Jan-Erik Gustafsson)