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Agreement -16: IT&Telecom companies comment on Seko's demands

The collective bargaining process Collective agreements Telecoms

Seko's demand for the 2016 telecom agreement is a wage increase of 3.2%, compared with 2.8% for Unionen and Akademikernas. The guaranteed wage increase for everyone will be SEK 400 and minimum wages will increase by SEK 800. In addition, salary steps will be introduced after a certain number of years in employment.

This is how Anne-Marie Fransson, Director of the IT&Telecom Companies Association, comments on Seko's demands:

- Having read these demands, we can conclude that Seko is not particularly concerned about competitiveness in the Swedish telecom sector. The demands for wage increases and changes in terms and conditions would mean significant cost increases for companies - which in the long term means that operations and jobs will move to other countries or that companies will avoid signing collective agreements. Various forms of customer service, network monitoring and support can be managed remotely with the help of technology. And that is the trend we are already seeing today.

- We can also note that Seko's demands differ considerably from those of the other parties in the agreement area, both in terms of pay levels and conditions. The telecom agreement is an employee agreement, which means that all employees at the company are covered by the same conditions for employment, wages and pensions. Companies want to treat all employees equally, there is no distinction between different categories of employees and the division between blue-collar and white-collar workers has completely played out its role. In today's companies, we are all employees and this has been an important principle, which we have defended since the agreement was first signed in 1995.

But now Seko seems to want to go another way. When Seko now demands completely different conditions than Unionen and Akademikerna, both in terms of wage increases, remuneration and other conditions, we can only interpret this as Seko striving for a traditional labor agreement, heavily regulated and with little opportunity for both companies and individuals to negotiate their own agreements. This is a particularly unfortunate development, which benefits neither companies nor members of Seko.