Sweden - Report exposes low pay on public projects - July 21, 2010

The LO union confederation has investigated three major public infrastructure projects and exposed how pressure from public authorities to keep costs low has led to sub-contractors paying foreign workers as little as 55% of the wage a worker would receive if covered by the relevant collective agreement. The report also notes how employers change their names and restrict contracts to six months to avoid Swedish tax rules. The projects investigated also show higher accident rates than the industry average. The confederation wants to see changes to public procurement practices that include a requirement to apply the industry collective agreement in contracts.

English: http://www.epsu.org/cob/373

Swedish: http://www.lo.se/home/lo/home.nsf/unidview ...

This article was published in the Collective Bargaining Newsletter. It aims to facilitate information exchange between trade unions and to support the work of ETUC's collective bargaining committee. For more information, please contact the editor Maarten van Klaveren, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) M.vanKlaveren@uva.nl. You may find further information on the ETUI atwww.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net. © ETUI aisbl, Brussels 2009.