Letter to the editor. Legislating on shorter working hours
The Social Democrats clubbed on Thursday during the Congress in Gothenburg that the party will support the social partners in negotiating a model for reduced working hours. Annika Strandhäll’s working group, which would investigate the conditions for « a sustainable working life », has proposed 35 hours of work week, but has been open to allowing this through party negotiations or legislation.
Strandhäll gave Happy message in DN that this should now not be done through legislation. LO has also driven loud for working hours reductions through party negotiations. This model could achieve working time reductions, but at the same time undermine the most important issue- that all working Swedes in fact reflect the macroeconomic productivity and value increases over time.
The most recent statutory working time reduction in Sweden took place in 1973, when the regular weekly working hours were lowered from 42.5 hours to 40 hours. According to Economy Facts Our gross domestic product per capita has increased by 61 percent over the past 30 years. In the past 40 years, productivity has increased on average by 1.95 percent per yearwhich has led Sweden to become one of the world’s most productive countries, According to the Study Association Business and Society.
But party negotiations If lowered working hours to reflect this development risks not necessarily benefit everyone. The so important « Swedish model », which we should rightly protect, would not go down by a statutory general working hours reduction for everyone. Such a regulation would only set the framework and ensure that everyone has access to it on fair and equal terms, while the parties would translate the framework into concrete, sometimes more ambitious, agreements.
Although the very idea that unions and employers themselves negotiate without political involvement is of the utmost importance and, with all the presumption, the fact that only 59 percent of workers were unionized in 2023, compared with 88 percent in the mid-1990s, remains unionist in the mid-1990s According to LO. The figure falls particularly drastically just for workers and young people, compared to officials and the elderly.
Unfortunately, the unions are not as strong and representative as before. At the same time, officials can flex out time and often work from home without transport time to and from work. In light of this relatively low union connection, different conditions for working remotely and varying negotiating power in different unions and an unequal collective agreement coverage in different industries and sectors (17 percent of all employees in the private sector are not covered by collective agreements, According to Economy Facts), how can it still be justified to maintain a legislative 40-hour week and keep your thumbs for LO to succeed in convincing Swedish business? In addition, a working timer from employers would probably constitute such a large compromise that the opportunities for negotiating better conditions in other areas would decrease significantly.
This is basically an existential issue. As a citizen, we have agreed to a social contract where we give in favor of work of our perhaps most valuable resource, time, to jointly live in prosperity and hopefully develop our human potential. But not everyone does it alone at work. And many people have far from enough hours left to acquire the preoccupation in culture, recovery, sports and socializing with friends.
It is time for the politicians to ensure a general reduction in working hours for everyone, whether you are covered by collective agreements or not, whether you are an official or a worker, or whether you are unionized or not. The harvest of productivity increases should benefit all the country’s citizens!
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