Sweden -Deal on main contractor liability in construction sector -April 04, 2014

Trade union Byggnads and the Swedish Construction Federation (BI) have reached an agreement on main contractor liability in the construction sector. Abuses of labour rights by subcontractors have long been on the agenda in construction. In the 2013 round of collective negotiations, trade unions and employers agreed to set up a committee that would have to come up with solutions within one year. As the committee failed to do so, Byggnads terminated the three-year collective agreement and announced that the construction workers would go on strike. On the eve of the strike actions mediated negotiations led to a deal on a sector wide mechanism for main contractor liability. According to the agreement, employers will set up a fund from which unpaid or underpaid construction workers can receive compensation for work carried out when all other possibilities have been exhausted. In first instance, however, unions and main contractors will work together to ensure that sub-contractors will pay the proper wages and take common action when this is not the case. Main contractors will also provide trade unions with up to date lists of all subcontractors in the chain, in order to facilitate workers’ representation and compliance checks. The mechanism on main contractor liability has been included in a collective agreement, which remains otherwise unchanged from the one that was repudiated by Byggnads earlier.

English: http://www.nordiclabourjournal.org/nyheter/news-2014/article.2014-04-03 ...  

For more information, please contact the editor Jan Cremers, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) cbn-aias@uva.nl or the communications officer at the ETUI, Mariya Nikolova mnikolova@etui.org. For previous issues of the Collective bargaining newsletter please visit http://www.etui.org/E-Newsletters/Collective-bargaining-newsletter. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net.