Susanna Gideonsson is elected LO chair

The election is being held at a digital congress, where the major issues that - before the coronation struck - would have been discussed, but have now been moved to the autumn instead. Gideonsson succeeds Karl-Petter Thorwaldsson who leaves after eight years and she becomes chairman of a total of 1.4 million members in 14 different unions, where Kommunal and IF Metall are the largest. 

As LO chair, she will be a member of the Social Democrats' highest leadership, she is already an alternate member of the executive committee.  

- We have a channel into politics and we will continue to have that. We will try to influence politics in every way we can, ”she told SVT when she was nominated as chairman a couple of weeks ago. 

At the same time, she wrote in a debate article that LO will be "merciless" if the Social Democrats do not run true S-politics. She has no counter-candidates in the presidential election, but there are still those who doubt her. The chairman of the Transport Workers' Union Tommy Wreeth writes in a chronicle that Gideonsson is perhaps more of a "compromising manager than the visionary facilitator the labor movement needs right now". Transport had rather seen Building Chairman Johan Lindholm as chairman.

Martin Klepke, however, believes that Gideonsson will drive LO's interests in the first place. 

- I think she will make life more problematic for Stefan Löfven than the current LO management has done. There will not be a proposal going against LO affiliates that she will not criticize, he says.