- During the dispute at APM, the LO allowed the Social Democrats to sponsor new legislation restricting the right to strike for all workers in Sweden. Just before the state presented its proposal, the LO got very scared because the result was devastating. It would have had a huge impact on the major confederations as well, just to get rid of us, or hit us.
Instead, to avoid that proposal, they made a deal with Swedish enterprise and together they proposed their own limitations on the right to strike. And that is now going to become law in 2020 — new limitations to the right to strike at companies or in branches where there already is a CBA in place. It will impact all unions in Sweden. White-collar workers, for example, have several unions organizing the same profession. Those professions will be heavily affected by the new legislation. It allows, for example, for employers who have the intention of doing so, to introduce yellow unions to block any other union, a legitimate union, from signing a proper CBA.
The LO allowed this to happen because they thought that we would be dead by the time that the legislation was launched. But in the end, they discovered too late that their own scheme had gotten out of hand. So they panicked and tried to make a less-bad deal with the employers. And that deal is now coming into law. But it will still hurt both them and all the white-collar unions in the other confederation. With the new law, the employers get an opportunity to pick their favorite union counterpart and isolate the other one. Because of the new legislation, the other union’s options will be very limited. This will be an effective tool in the employers’ hands. I think parts of the LO are discovering this at this point, but it’s too late.