White- and blue collar workers traditionally belong to different unions and, therefore, are covered by different collective agreements. Collective agreements for different employee categories create internal divisions, which mean that white collar workers are not obliged to do work that falls under a blue collar agreement and reversed. Historically the difference between white- and blue collar work has been fairly sharp and so has the difference between collective agreements. Due to the continuous development of technology white- and blue collar work within production has become less clear. This has resulted in an increasing amount of disagreements regarding what collective agreement should apply and whether the employee is obliged to perform different work tasks.
At Volvo Trucks in Skövde the local parties had the intention to solve these problems by creating a single-status agreement, covering all employees within the organization regardless of employee category. The local management board??s main purpose with this agreement was to break down the internal division that traditional collective agreements create. The purpose also was to increase flexibility when it comes to recruitment and scheduling of working hours, as well as to decrease the co-determination of the unions in different employer??s issues. Despite the success of the local parties to negotiate a proposition for a single-status agreement, the proposition wasn??t accepted by the global management board. This thesis aims to conclude whether the conditions set up by the management board would have been fulfilled through the single-status agreement proposed by the parties and in that way finding an answer to why the single-status agreement wasn??t accepted.
This thesis mainly builds upon a traditional juridical method, but also upon social science methodology. Collective agreement as a legal institute is regulated in 23 § LAS and is defined in the preparatory work on the proposed law as well as in case law. Labour management (§ 32-befogenheterna) constitute general legal principles, but can be restricted by law, agreements or case law. To investigate how the proposed single-status agreement would have affected labour management specific clauses in current law, as well as in the central and local collective agreements and the proposed single-status agreement, have been examined briefly. The obligation to work (arbetsskyldigheten) is determined by what is said in the agreement. To fulfil the purpose of this thesis the proposition of single-status agreement has undergone a literal construction. Civil law construction is dealt with in the doctrine in connection to 32 § AvtL and construction of collective agreements in connection to 23 § MBL. The methods of construction established by the labour court are to be found in case law. As a complement to the above a social science methodology has been used with the purpose of finding the legal parties?? original intentions with different wordings in applied clauses.
The result of the research shows that the single-status agreement would have limited labour management in comparison to the central agreements. Most importantly, it would have sustained the internal division between the different employee categories, preventing employees f...
