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Labor Unions

In Sweden we have a Labour Union for nearly each kind of work.

There are three trade union confederations in Sweden - LO, TCO and SACO

LO - The Swedish Trade Union Confederation – is the central organization for 16 trade unions that organize blue-collar workers in the private, municipal and state sectors. The trade unions affiliated to LO have a total of 2.1 million members. The predominant organizational model in the LO unions is based on the workplace principle – i.e. all the employees at a workplace belong to the same trade union

TCO - The Swedish Confederation of Professional Employees - is the central organization for whitecollar workers. Sif is the largest of the 18 trade unions affiliated to TCO. Together, these unions organize 1.2 million members. Both the industrial principle (all the employees in an industry belong to the same union) and the occupational principle (all the employees in the same occupation) are applied among the TCO unions.

SACO - The Swedish Confederation of Professional Associations - is primarily the central organization for academically-qualified whitecollar workers. SACO’s members belong to professional associations for, for example, lawyers, doctors and psychologists, with a total membership of just under 500 000. White-collar workers with an academic qualification can decide whether they want to joint an organization affiliated to TCO or to SACO.

All of the central organizations – TCO, LO and SACO – are members of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and the Council of Nordic Trade Unions (NFS).

Eight of ten employees are union members

For exampel:

There is HTF, for members who works in trade, transport and service.

SKTF is a national trade local union for publicly and privately employed salaried employees who work with service and support to the public within municipal and county areas, as well as within the church.

Sif is a trade union that works in the technology and knowledge-based sectors of the labour market. In simple terms, this means that Sif's members work in the private sector in companies that operate in areas such as IT, telecom, construction, manufacturing and R&D.

And then there are many more, and at each work, one can get the information of what union there is just there.