No. Even though the circumstances are
remarkably similar, this incident is different in one important aspect
from the one leading to the ruling from the EU court in
2007.
Unlike Laval, this company, Metto Jumti, actually had signed
Byggnads’ collective agreement and agreed to pay its workers a
market price of 158 kronor an hour. And unlike Laval’s workers these
workers had joined Byggnads after not receiving any wages after two
months of working. Five days’ industrial action to recover the unpaid
wages led Metto Jumti to promise to pay, and a few days later the pay
was in the workers’ accounts.
This story illustrates how efficiently Swedish unions can secure the
rights of foreign workers as long as the employer is signatory to a
collective agreement. So far most foreign companies have actually
signed Swedish collective agreements.
Since 15 April this year, however, new legislation on posted workers
and industrial action has been in force, ‘Lex Laval’, which means
companies can operate in Sweden without the need to sign agreements, as
long as they can ‘demonstrate’ that their employees enjoy at least the
same conditions as Swedish colleagues.
The construction workers still hope nothing will change. If they are
right they can be congratulated. But if you listen to the employers –
and this is where the penny drops – there is reason to believe more and
more foreign companies will take advantage of the opportunities the new
regulations present. And without a formal collective agreement unions
are powerless.
The Swedish Parliament has in effect passed legislation which
undermines the control mechanisms which traditionally have been present
in the Swedish labour market, without replacing them with other ways of
controlling the market which could have compensated for this loss. The
focus on the Laval case might have left the outside world with the
impression that foreign companies are treated very strictly in Sweden.
Yet in reality Sweden is unusually liberal; it is both possible and
legal for foreign companies to supply services for long periods of time
without the Swedish authorities even knowing they’re present in the
country. In this respect Sweden is different from Norway, Denmark and
Finland, which have all tightened their monitoring of foreign companies
in recent years.
The Swedish Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) and the Swedish
Confederation of Professional Employees (TCO) say the new rules mean
Sweden no longer fulfils its commitments to the International Labour
Organisation (ILO) concerning the conventions on the right to uinion
membership and the right to collective negotiations. That question will
now be examined by ILO’s Committee of Experts. Irrespective of the
answer there is a more pressing question: does Sweden live up to its
commitments to the EU according to the directive on the posting of
workers? In their haste to avoid introducing elements which would be
‘incompatible with the Swedish model’ the lawmakers seem to have
forgotten one of the directive’s aims, namely to protect the posted
workers. It is doubtful whether Lex Laval will give them the protection
they are entitled to.
It would in other words not be surprising if Sweden was to be forced
to reexamine the legislation in order to close a loophole here. Perhaps
that would also allow for the studying of the rules from a different
perspective. Lower wages is not the only – and perhaps not even the
most important – competition tool available to foreign companies. A
posted worker can remain in the social security system of his or her
home country for two years. That encourages trickeries and cheating
because statutory social fees levied at employers varies enormously
between different countries. Even the authorities in charge of making
sure employees fall under the correct social benefit system struggle to
control this. Time for a reality check?
