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Swedish Trade Union Confederation

Landsorganisationen i Sverige (LO)
Founded	7 August 1898; 126 years ago (1898-08-07)
Headquarters	Stockholm, Sweden
Location	Sweden
Members	1.23 million
Key people	Johan Lindholm, president
Affiliations	ITUC, ETUC
Website	www.lo.se

The Swedish Trade Union Confederation (Swedish: Landsorganisationen i Sverige [ˈlânː(d)sɔrɡanɪsaˌɧuːnɛn iː ˈsvæ̌rjɛ] ; literally "The National Organisation in Sweden"), commonly referred to as LO (Swedish: [ˈɛ̂lːuː] ), is a national trade union centre, an umbrella organisation for fourteen Swedish trade unions that organise mainly "blue-collar" workers. The Confederation, which gathers around 1.5 million employees out of Sweden's 10 million people population, was founded in 1898 by blue-collar unions on the initiative of the 1897 Scandinavian Labour Congress and the Swedish Social Democratic Party, which almost exclusively was made up by trade unions. In 2019 union density of Swedish blue-collar workers was 60%, a decline by seventeen percentage points since 2006 when blue-collar union density was 77%. A strong contributing factor was the considerably raised fees to union unemployment funds in January 2007 made by the new centre-right government.

History

Organisation

The fourteen affiliates of the Swedish Trade Union Confederation span both the private and the public sector. The member unions are fully independent, with the role of the Confederation limited to the co-ordination of wage bargaining, international activities, trade union education and other areas. Another important task is to promote the organisation's views to decision-makers and the general public. It also has representatives on the governing bodies of many government authorities. The Confederation is also responsible for research and signing labour market insurance schemes. The member unions, however, carry the responsibility for the administration of the unemployment insurance funds.

While its Danish sister organisation, the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions, cut its formal ties to the country's Social Democratic party in 1995, the Swedish Trade Union Confederation maintains a strong cooperation with the Social Democrats. Although the organisations are independent from each other, the Swedish Trade Union Confederation has a representative on the party's executive committee elected by the Party Congress. Also, both the Confederation and the member unions contribute substantial amounts of money to the party.

Until 1987 there was a system of collective membership in the Social Democratic Party for members in the confederation, in which the local union could apply for membership in the Social Democratic Party, effectively enrolling all its members into the Social Democratic Party. (An individual could decline to be part of this collective membership.)

In 1956 social democratic newspaper Stockholms-Tidningen was acquired by the Swedish Trade Union Confederation. Until recently, it owned 50.1% of the evening newspaper Aftonbladet, the largest daily newspaper in Scandinavia (as of 2005). As of 2012, the organisation owns 9% of the newspaper. The organisation bought Aftonbladet in 1956 but sold off 49.9 percent to the Norwegian media company Schibsted on 2 May 1996.

The number of member unions has been reduced by mergers. Most recently the Forest and Wood Workers' Union and the Graphic Workers' Union merged into the single GS Union on 1 June 2009.

Affiliates

Current affiliates

Membership of LO affiliates (31 December 2018)

Union	Abbreviation	Founded	Men	Women	Total	Change (2017)
Swedish Building Workers' Union	Byggnads	1949	77 512	1 218	78 730	409
Swedish Electricians' Union	SEF	1906	18 518	456	18 974	333
Swedish Building Maintenance Workers' Union	Fastighets	1936	13 624	12 700	26 324	718
GS	GS	2009	31 987	6 861	38 848	1 096
Swedish Commercial Employees' Union	Handels	1906	45 665	77 672	123 337	1 001
Swedish Hotel and Restaurant Workers' Union	HRF	1918	10 949	16 017	26 966	921
IF Metall	IF Metal	2006	200 292	46 543	246 835	305
Swedish Municipal Workers' Union	Kommunal	1910	108 426	391 728	500 154	7 333
Swedish Food Workers' Union	Livs	1922	15 317	8 041	23 358	1 062
Swedish Painters' Union	Målarna	1887	9 833	1 277	11 110	47
Swedish Paper Workers' Union	Pappers	1920	11 722	2 190	13 912	370
Swedish Union for Service and Communications Employees	Seko	1970	53 981	18 175	72 156	960
Swedish Musicians' Union	SMF	1907	1 805	469	2 274	13
Swedish Transport Workers' Union	Transport	1897	41 494	8 343	49 837	1 889
TOTAL			641 125	591 690	1 232 815	15 575
			52%	48%		1.25%

Former affiliates

List of chairmen

• Fredrik Sterky, 1898–1900
• Herman Lindqvist, 1900–1920
• Arvid Thorberg, 1920–1930
• Edvard Johanson, 1930–1936
• Albert Forslund, February–September 1936
• August Lindberg, 1936–1947
• Axel Strand, 1947–1956
• Arne Geijer, 1956–1973
• Gunnar Nilsson, 1973–1983
• Stig Malm, 1983–1993
• Bertil Jonsson, 1994–2000
• Wanja Lundby-Wedin, 2000—2012
• Karl-Petter Thorwaldsson, 2012–2020
• Susanna Gideonsson, 2020–2024
• Johan Lindholm, 2024–present

See also

• Danish Confederation of Trade Unions (Danish LO)
• Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (Norwegian LO)
• Swedish Confederation of Professional Employees (TCO)
• Swedish Confederation of Professional Associations (SACO)
• Central Organisation of the Workers of Sweden (SAC, Swedish trade union not connected to LO)
• Rehn–Meidner Model

References

1. Bohlin, Albin (20 May 2024). "Efter avhoppet: Byggnads ordförande vald till ny LO-boss". Altinget.se. Altinget. Retrieved 21 May 2024.
2. Torvald Karlbom Den svenska fackföreningsrörelsen, Stockholm: Tidens förlag, pp. 45-47
3. Yearly average in 2019. See Anders Kjellberg (2020) Kollektivavtalens täckningsgrad samt organisationsgraden hos arbetsgivarförbund och fackförbund, Department of Sociology, Lund University. Studies in Social Policy, Industrial Relations, Working Life and Mobility. Research Reports 2020:1, Appendix 3 (in English) Table A
4. Anders Kjellberg "The Decline in Swedish Union Density since 2007" Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies (NJWLS) Vol. 1. No 1 (August 2011), pp. 67-93
5. Anders Kjellberg and Christian Lyhne Ibsen (2016) "Attacks on union organizing: Reversible and irreversible changes to the Ghent-systems in Sweden and Denmark", in Trine Pernille Larsen and Anna Ilsøe (eds.)(2016) Den Danske Model set udefra - komparative perspektiver på dansk arbejdsmarkedsregulering, Copenhagen: Jurist- og Økonomforbundets Forlag, p. 292
6. "This is LO". The Swedish Trade Union Confederation. Retrieved 2023-02-23.
7. Ingemar Oscarsson (2003). "Development of the Swedish press and journalism since the Thirty Years War until today". In Hartmut Walravens; Edmund King (eds.). Newspapers in International Librarianship: Papers Presented by the Newspaper Section at IFLA General Conferences. Munich: IFLA Publications. p. 18. ISBN 978-3-11-096279-6.
8. Kjellberg, Anders (2017). "The Membership Development of Swedish Trade Unions and Union Confederations Since the End of the Nineteenth Century" (PDF). Lund University. p. 188. Retrieved 8 October 2019.
9. Kjellberg, Anders (2017). The Membership Development of Swedish Trade Unions and Union Confederations Since the End of the Nineteenth Century. Lund University. ISBN 978-9172673106.
10. Kjellberg, Anders (2017). The Membership Development of Swedish Trade Unions and Union Confederations Since the End of the Nineteenth Century. Lund University. p. 198. ISBN 978-9172673106.
11. Mitchell, James P. (1955). Directory of Labor Organizations: Europe. Washington DC: United States Department of Labor. pp. 27.19–27.34.
12. Bohlin, Albin (20 May 2024). "Efter avhoppet: Byggnads ordförande vald till ny LO-boss". Altinget.se. Altinget. Retrieved 21 May 2024.

• Swedish Trade Union Confederation
• Labour movement in Sweden
• International Trade Union Confederation
• European Trade Union Confederation
• Swedish Social Democratic Party
• 1898 establishments in Sweden
• Trade unions established in 1898
• Organizations based in Stockholm