New case law – question as to whether an employer without a collective agreement has breached the duty to provide information under the Co-determination Act (AD 2026 nr 38)

Question as to whether an employer, who has no collective agreement, has breached the duty to provide information under Section 19a of the Co-determination Act by failing to keep the employees’ organisation continuously informed of how the business is developing in terms of production and finances, as well as regarding the guidelines for personnel policy. Also, question whether the company, by failing to provide the relevant information in response to a questionnaire, has breached the duty to negotiate under Section 15 of the same Act. Furthermore, question whether the company has breached the duty to negotiate under Section 16 of the same Act by failing to approve a set of minutes of negotiations.

The Labour Court has found that certain negotiations between the parties concerned a legal dispute and not a dispute of interests, which means that part of the union’s claim is time-barred. Since the company had provided certain information to the union, and as the union had not claimed that any specific event had occurred or that the company intended to take any decision that could affect the union’s members during the period in question, the Labour Court found that the company had not breached its duty to provide information. Nor has the Labour Court considered that the company breached its duty to negotiate, partly because the company was not obliged to provide the requested information during the negotiations, and partly because both parties contributed to the failure to produce a finalised minutes.

Read more here (Swedish).