There are three parties negotiating.
LO which represents the workers, PTK which represents the salaried employees and the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, which represents the employers.
So what are you talking about?
Simply put, there are three areas.
Terms of employment, adjustment and the unemployment insurance fund.
The terms of employment have so far been the most controversial point.
The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise wants more exceptions from the rules of priority in the event of dismissal, while LO does not want loosening of labor law.
Claes Stråth is former director general of the Mediation Institute and has worked with labor market issues for decades.
He thinks it makes it easier to talk about several areas at the same time.
- It is a great advantage that these negotiations do not only concern a single issue, employment protection, but also completely different issues.
It provides better conditions for the parties to be able to agree, you can exchange things with each other, which opens up for compromises, he says.
Believes that unions and employers want to keep politics away
However, the talks are taking place under great political pressure.
If the parties do not reach an agreement themselves, the January agreement states that in that case they will legislate on the basis of the las investigation that was presented at the beginning of the summer.
And then political battle awaits.
The Center Party and the Liberals then want to make law out of the investigation, while the Left Party threatens to try to overthrow the government in that case.
Claes Stråth believes, however, that unions and employers will want to agree in some way, to keep politicians away from the labor market.
- Neither of these parties wants to risk squandering the opportunity to reach an agreement that will probably be able to become historic in the same way as the Saltsjöbad agreement in 1938, he says.
Even if an agreement is reached, it will take some time before new rules exist in the entire labor market.
The parties' agreements apply to 2.8 million people, but this is far from all, for example those who do not have a collective agreement are covered.