A sustainable and inclusive Swedish labour market the way ahead

In 2017, Professor Tonia Novitz wrote on ‘Collective Bargaining, Equality and Migration: The Journey to and from Brexit’ (Industrial Law Journal 109 – 133). The warnings which she issued regarding wage regulation, the working environment and migrant labour attracted the interest of Swedish academics who asked her to join them in a grant application to the SRC funding.

The project has three parts, which focus on changes in the Swedish industrial relations model and its challenges relating to coverage of workers in the contemporary labour market. The first part will look at wage setting through collective agreements and the consequences of the absence of a statutory national minimum wage. The second part will investigate the working environment and its regulation, considering the increasing incidence of bullying and harassment at work. The third part will investigate working conditions for labour migrants, in terms of access to work, justice at work and citizenship.

Professor Novitz is engaged in the fourth part of the project, which focuses on comparison with the UK and whether labour-related factors that contributed to the Brexit decision are identifiable in the Swedish context. The project as a whole will assess how the Swedish labour law framework can be adapted in order to make it inclusive and sustainable.