labour court has in a very large number of cases upheld the worker’s duty of obedience as an “established collective agreement principle of considerable weight”.619 It has no doubt to some extent been limited, for example by the “sauna bather principle” (Sw. bastubadarprincipen)620. Still, in the end, the employer decides what tasks the worker shall perform, which gives him a wide space for making the enterprise more effective, for example, by introducing new methods and thus changing the content of the contract of employment. If the employee refuses to perform tasks which are considered to be within the natural framework of the employment, she or he can be dismissed according to the rules of the Protection of Employment Act concerning “personal reasons”.621 In its application of the 29/29-principle, the labour court has tended to favour solutions whereby the employee has more, rather than less, extensive work duties. Technically these rules can be characterised as an option for the employer to change the terms of the worker’s tasks without having to give notice or reasons for doing so. Still the tendency to let the individual contract be subordinate to the collective agreements is maintained. As Jonas Malmberg has shown, the precise requirement of the rules are determined in the individual case, but in contrast to the usual approach of the courts in general contract law, the labour court does not generally take account of factors peculiar to the particular employer and employee. Instead the terms of the particular contract of employment are matters for negotiations on the collective level. This method has tended to make the employer immune to such individual facts of interpretation that could limit the worker’s p a r t v, c h a p t e r 1 2 350 619 AD1990:59; AD1995:31; Sigeman1995, p.482; Källström2002, p.81; Fahlbeck2002, pp. 98-100. Edström2002, p. 178, claims that the term “co-determination” might be misleading. In practice it means an end for the endeavour to involve the employees through negotiations or other arrangements agreed upon in collective agreements. 620 AD1978:89; Sigeman 1998. 621 Svensäter 1991, pp. 493-495.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=