Gynnar Sverige missbruk av visstidsanställning?
In the European Union and in Swedish labor law, permanent employment is the main goal for employment of workers. An exception to that rule is temporary employment. The Swedish rules relating to temporary employment have undergone several changes since the Employment Protection Act was implemented in 1974. The last reform in 2007 has received criticism by respondents for not following the Union directive on fixed-term work, which went into effect in 2001. In 2010 the European Commission opened an infringement case against Sweden, after a complaint from a Swedish employees? organization. The Commission argues that Sweden has not taken the directive on fixed-term work into account sufficiently in its last reform. Therefore, in the spring of 2011, the Swedish government published a department investigation regarding further modification, taking the provisions for temporary employment in the Employment Protection Act into consideration. The department investigation stated that the purpose of the legislative changes is not to change the legal situation, but to clarify the legal position with respect to the fixed-term work directive. The proposal for legislative change is in regards to the directive?s requirements to prevent abuse of successive fixed term contracts. An employer will not be able to combine fixed-term contracts for 5 and 6 § § in a manner that is abusive. This paper aims to examine how well the legislative changes live up to the requirements for the fixed-term in the directive. The author concludes that there is a need to extend the protection of the prohibition of abuse of fixed term contracts. However, the author considers the government?s proposal to be inferior, because it is doubtful whether it can solve the problems in question, because, for example, the directive lacks clarity and the term ?abuse? is not well defined.