About 50,000 welfare workers are employed in the agreement areas. The workplaces concerned include, among others, health centers, and elderly care facilities.
The contentious issue concerns overtime compensation, where Vårdföretagarna, according to Kommunal, have opposed part-time employees receiving the same high compensation for overtime as full-time employees.
They do not want to agree to it without very large exceptions, and we do not think we should agree to any exceptions, but rather that it should be equivalent when working within the same industry, says Malin Ragnegård.
”Have made an effort”
Similar agreements have recently been signed with both SKR and Sobona, according to Ragnegård.
She emphasizes that 63 percent are part-time employees at private elderly care companies, and believes it is no coincidence, but rather because it is cheaper to let them work overtime.
Vårdföretagarna's chief negotiator Per Östlund says in a press release that the decision is "regrettable".
"Kommunal wants more than everyone else in the Swedish labor market. We have made an effort to find solutions, including on the overtime issue, but unfortunately, Kommunal does not accept the solutions that have worked on all other agreement areas", says Per Östlund further.
Two-week deadline
If the parties do not agree before June 16 at 7 am, work will be stopped at a large number of workplaces.
We, of course, want to avoid conflict and strike, it is always a last resort, so we hope that we will come to an agreement before it breaks out. But it will require that Vårdföretagarna actually move, says Malin Ragnegård.
