Sweden: Interpretation of Collective Bargaining Agreement
Author: Karolina Sundqvist
A schedule to the relevant collective bargaining agreement included a provision to exempt two employees from the order of priority in the event of dismissal due to redundancy. The provision was in principle identical to Section 22 of the EPA, in its wording before 30 June 2022, with the exception that the word “operational units” (Sw. turordningskretsar) had been replaced by the word “operational areas” (Sw. turordningsområden). The Labour Court was to decide whether the provision merely constituted information on the content of Section 22 of the EPA, in which case Section 22 of the EPA, in its current wording (after 1 October 2022) allows the employer to exempt three employees instead of two and would be immediately applicable. If the provision, on the other hand, was to be considered content of the collective bargaining agreement, the provision on the exemption of two employees would serve as a collectively agreed exemption to the otherwise applicable Section 22 (in its current wording) of the EPA.
The starting point for interpreting a collective agreement is that it is primarily the common intention of the parties at the time of the conclusion of the collective bargaining agreement which decides the content of the agreement. If the interpretation cannot be assessed by establishing a common intent by the parties, the assessment shall instead be made based on the wording of the agreement. The Labour Court also stated that other content and structure of the agreement, as well as the at the time the agreement was concluded, can provide guidance for interpretation. According to the preamble of the collective bargaining agreement, the agreement includes both provisions that constitute the content of the collective bargaining agreement and provisions that merely inform about the applicable legislation. However, neither the preamble nor the text of the agreement provide any clarification on which parts of the agreement constitute the content of the collective bargaining agreement and which parts are merely information on the content of applicable legislation.
The Labour Court assessed that, in the absence of explicit regulation, such provisions in the section that deviated in substance from the EPA was to be considered the content of a collective bargaining agreement. On the other hand, in light of what was stated in the above-mentioned preamble, such parts of the agreement that had been taken completely unchanged from the EPA must normally be regarded as mere information about the content of the legal text.
The Court stated that the replacement of the word “operational unit” with the word “operational area” may be regarded as an industry adaptation to the agreement area since it had emerged that the meaning of the terms differs in several ways. The provision had, therefore, not been taken unchanged from the EPA, which is why the Labour Court concluded that the provision constituted the content of a collective bargaining agreement.
Key Action Points for Human Resources and In-House Counsel
It is important to thoroughly review the provisions in applicable collective bargaining agreements to distinguish between binding content and informational references to legislation.
