Employment protection laws

In Sweden, people and their experience aren't considered worth much. Some large Swedish companies believe that their workforce is too old. They want young people with a fresh education (and lower expectation on salary). The more inexperienced manager the younger employees.... But in Sweden there is an unpopulair law called LAS, the employment protection law. It means that when a company needs to reduce the number of employees, it has to follow the "first in last out" principal for people with exactly the same competence.


Instead of following the law, the large corporations tend to make an agreement with the union to fire or keep anyone as they like but instead of a job give the fired personnel extra payment. Fair enough.


There is a constant discussion in media what a problem the LAS law is and how difficult it is for young people to get a job these days, so I guess it it just a matter of time before it is being changed. I need to defend that law in discussions with almost everone, everywhere even at home...since they children have learnt at school how inflexible the law is. Now I believe that most people who has been working for many years have a lot of valuable experience, that smart companies would take care of and use in the most benefitial way. But on the other hand, in Sweden it is quite easy to throw out your mate when you're tired of her/him, then why should it be so difficult to replace an old secretary with a younger one...for example.

In China, my understanding is that some companies fire their personnel just before they have been working in the company for 10 years, and then re-employ some of them with a new and possibly lower salary, in order to get around the Chinese law if employment protection.


It is not only due to the financial crises people are fired in Sweden, but due to the high costs for employees, with about 30% (or more) in tax for the employer. Then the employees will have to pay another 30-50% tax on their income.


In Canada, they have decided to lower the tax for companies investing in the country. So jobs are now being moved from Sweden, not only to traditional low cost countries like India and China, but also to Canada! Another way for Swedish companies to lower the cost, could be to buy similar Canadian companies, just to be able to fire another bunch of expensive Swedes. I don't know..