Att tolka kollektivavtal

Sammanfattning: Collective agreements hold an unique position in Swedish labour law. The Swedish legislator has allowed many issues to be unsettled for the benefit of the parties' autonomy and self-regulation through collective bargaining. When the parties disagree on the meaning of a collective agreement they may take the dispute to the Swedish Labour Court. There are no legislated guidelines on how the interpretation of collective agreements should be done, which creates a significant independence for the court's ruling. The main purpose of this paper is to study the Labour Court’s interpretations of collective agreements. This is done in two steps, both of which are done using a legal analytical method. First comes a more general description of the rules of interpretation that the Labour Court uses. Then follows an in-depth study of the Labour Court's judgements between 2010 and 2014. In the last part of the thesis the results of the previous study are analysed. The analysis is made both from a general critical perspective and from a power theory perspective, where the basis is that the employee in an initial position is at a disadvantage against the employer. The question then is how the interpretation relates to these positions of power. To achieve a greater balance of power between employers and employees by interpretation is possibly a more controversial opinion and something that has traditionally been considered a task for the legislator. The study shows that the rules for interpretation of collective agreements have remained unchanged since the Labour Court's establishment. The parties' common intention of the agreement is always what primarily determines the meaning – but such a common intention is often hard to find in disputes that reach the Labour Court. Then the court sees to the contract wording. After this, the order of the interpretation rules is more difficult to determine. The court may look to the parties’ responsibility for ambiguities, the practice between the parties and what can be assumed to be the contract’s purpose and the rationality of the interpretation. On closer examination of all interpretation judgments the Labour Court has announced 2010 – 2014, it becomes clear that the wording occupies a remarkably strong position in the modern interpretation of collective agreements. The other interpretation rules appear in the majority of cases almost as support rules to the wording. An interpretation that concentrates on the wording opens up for criticism. The Labour Court is not entirely consistent – why certain questions are determined using a purpose interpretation but other ends after a wording interpretation is not totally clear. Furthermore, the aim of the thesis was to examine the interpretation from a power perspective. If one believes that the imbalance of power between workers and employers remains in the individual employment relationship, despite the collective agreement, one can argue that it is questionable to let the interpretation stop at the wording without regard to the agreement’s purpose and reasonableness. Such an approach has the tendency to strengthen the employer’s management rights.