265 analys. Personligen vill jag efter drygt 35 år i domstolens tjänst betyga att jag i domstolen träffat på många ledamöter med de av Dahlman beskrivna egenskaperna, ett förhållande som för en ämbetsmannajurist inneburit ett privilegium att få tillhöra och verka inom AD. Summary The Labour Court The Labour Court {Arbetsdomstolen), established in 1928, is the first and sole instance for certain labour lawcases, and functions as a court of appeal for other labour lawcases instituted in the district courts. The most important cases before the Labour Court are those relating to collective agreements between an employer, or a group of employers, and employees or groups of employees. This discussion is consequently mainly limited to examining the Court’s case law relating to the validity of such collective agreements and its interpretations of provisions in such agreements. By way of introduction it can be stated that a collective agreement, like other types of contract, falls within the scope of the law on contract. Collective agreements are, however, also regulated by special rules in the Joint Regulation Act {lag om medbestämmande i arbetslivet). Collective agreements are required to be made in writing, they must deal with conditions of employment for employees or otherwise concern the relationship between employer and employee and the agreement must be between an employer or employers on the one hand and a trade union on the other. The case law of the Labour Court on the subject before 1966, when public employees were granted the right to strike, has already been the subject of detailed analysis by Folke Schmidt, professor of labour law. Accordingly, the author of the present study has mainly limited himself to the subsequent case law in order to determine whether the approach of the Labour Court has altered in any important respect. The conclusion is reached that the post-1966 legislation has placed the issue of the validity of collective agreements in another light. The law of employment of state and local authority employees from 1966 initially led to the contracting parties agreeing to continue existing general conditions of employment even in the area left free for specific regulation by collective agreements. The enactment of the law on employment protection in 1974 opened up the possibility of reaching local agreements regulating dismissal and laying off of workers which diverged from the general legal provisions. The Joint Regulation Act expanded the employees’ representatives’ right to be consulted concerning laying off and dismissals, and to negotiate how these can be best carried out, to include a right to be consulted concerning significant alterations in working practices, without, however, formally removing the employer’s sole right of decision in such areas. The present article describes a number of cases which illustrate the effects of the post-1966 legislation on the issue of the validity of collective agreements. A number of issues relating to the invalidity of collective agreements are also examined in detail in some twenty cases in the Labour Court. An important question here is the scope of application of the so called general clause in section 36 of the Law on Contracts when dealing with the possibility of modifying the provisions of a collective agreement. The article also contains a description of concealed clauses, of the influence of mediation and of principles of interpretation to be applied when interpreting particular provisions of the collective agreement. All the significant changes detected in the practice of
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