Sweden - Union leader puts pressure on employers to act on equality - April 29, 2010

With pay negotiations underway, the President of the Kommunal municipal workers’ union, Ylva Thorn, has called on local government employer organisations SKL and SALAR to put words into action and tackle the gender pay gap. Writing in the Dagbladet national newspaper, Thorn argues that employees working in female-dominated professions face higher levels of part-time work, job insecurity, work-related ill health and above all lower pay. She points out that local authority workers, the vast majority of them women, are among the lowest paid among workers represented by the LO-affiliated unions. She asks in particular the SKL how this squares with their claims to be delivering equality.

English: http://www.epsu.org/cob/364

Swedish: http://www.kommunal.se/Kommunal/press/I-debatten/2010/Jamstallda-loner-avgorande-krav/

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.