| 2. |
- Fusco, Federico
(författare)
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Can we sacrifice the freedom of association for the sake of productivity? The case of the Göteborg harbor in Sweden and the upcoming changes in the Swedish legislation.
- 2019
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Sweden is a country that traditionally respects the freedom of association and the large number of existing trade unions confirms this statement.On the other hand, however, the Swedish trade union system is structured in a way that eliminates almost every sort of competition between different organizations. In fact, for every sector of the economy there is approximately one union for blue collars and one for white collars, each of which signs its own collective agreement.For this reason the trade union pluralism is due to the large number of existing sectors, but the system is not prepared to deal with the existence of two different trade unions, with opposite ideologies, organizing the same type of workers in the same sector.This is exactly the situation that has developed in the Göteborg harbor, where Transport, the major national union of transportation workers, represents only few employee, while the majority (85%) is unionized in SHF, a spin-off of Transport born because of different ideologies.Since 2016 the company running the harbor (APM Terminals) is excluding SHF from every kind of industrial relation, thus causing an ongoing conflict which is seriously affecting the harbor activity, that in 2017 scored a -19% in the containers trade.The situation arose as national debate because the Göteborg terminal is the biggest of the country and it handles the 60% of the Swedish export industry (the major pillar of the domestic economy). Its reduced productivity is, then, causing important economic losses also to subjects extraneous to the dispute.For this reason the legislator stepped into the conflict, declaring the willingness to extend the peace obligation linked to the conclusion of a collective agreement also to the trade unions who had not signed it. At the present moment there are different actions that have been suggested, but they all share the common thread of safeguard the trade union that normally bargains with the employer. However, missing any rule linking the trade unions’ representativeness with the right to bargain and moving from a situation in which there is basically only one union per sector which normally bargains, the practical result is to almost eliminate every kind of dissent among different trade unions. An organization different from the historical ones, in fact, would not be able to strike in order to support its collective agreement, thus transforming the collective bargain in collective begging. This rule would be applied even is spite of the trade union’s greater representativeness and it has been specifically design to prevent SHF (which in Göteborg represents the 85% of the workers) to continue its collective action.Moving from those remarks this paper aims to study the ongoing changes in the Swedish law, in order to provide an analysis useful also as an international benchmark. In fact, the described limitations of the trade union’s activity, even in spite of a strong representativeness, seems to clash with the fundamental freedom of association, thus raising the Swedish case as an important reference point for the whole subject.
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| 5. |
- Fusco, Federico
(författare)
-
Rethinking The Allocation Criteria Of The Labour Law Rights And Protections: A Risk-Based Approach
- 2019
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The present paper investigates the ongoing validity of the notion of subordination as selection criteria to allocate the labour protections in the contemporary economic framework. The gig economy is deeply affecting the way of working, transforming the employee in a service provider. This phenomenon is partially due to the progressive shift from a firm-based production model towards a market transaction based one. Although its lawfulness is still unclear, it highline that the way of working is changing in a way that struggles to fit in the classic legal categories. This is mainly due to the fact that the labour protections are usually bestowed moving from a notion of subordination highly focused on the organizational element. Thus, economic actors suffering from the same economic weakness of the employees, but organizationally independent, struggles to obtain the necessary protections.Moving from those remarks the A. suggests to rethink the allocation criteria of the labour protections, adopting as the main one the economic weakness. This category should encompass all the individuals performing a working activity that are not able to significantly influence its financial outcome. The aim of such reform should be to extend the labour protections to all the subjects needing them.The final part of the paper investigates the possible solutions under the current legal framework. The major finding is that under certain circumstances the gig workers can be qualified as temporary employee not of the platform, but of the contractor. The main consequence of this interpretation is represented by the fact that the digital platforms should be deemed as job-placement service providers. Thus, they should comply with the relevant provisions, including the eventual need of administrative authorizations and the free-of-charge principle.
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