News

Statement from the NTO Annual Meeting, 30 May 2008



Safeguard the value of collective agreements– stop wage dumping in the telecom sector



Relacom, one of the contractors on the telecom market in the Nordic countries is engaged in wage dumping and exploits foreign low salary workers. The Nordic Telecom Organisation (NTO) calls on Relacom to immediately stop wage dumping and to respect the wages and other conditions in the collective agreement in force.



With the recent Vaxholm court case in mind we can expect that more operators/suppliers will appear on the Swedish labour market thinking that they are free to hire foreign workers and/or engage in wage dumping, paying wages that you cannot live on in Sweden. We have already seen some horrible examples; Relacom sacked approximately 100 workers and brought in telecoms technicians from Poland who work in Sweden without being covered by the collective agreement. The company’s interpretation of the Vaxholm court is that this is legitimate.



NTO is concerned with the continuous lowering of salaries and worsening of other benefits, and social conditions of workers in the telecoms sector. The development is partly due to the fierce competition between different operators who compete through pressing down the prices to unrealistic levels in order to get advantages. It is our members working in telecoms who pay the cost of this through worsening of their conditions.



Collective agreements have for a long time been considered as evident in Sweden, They are now ignored by the contractor. Collective agreements concluded by the unions and the employer constitute a guarantee that companies and contractors/suppliers do not apply lower conditions for their workers in order to gain competition advantage. Collective agreements guarantee fair competition in individual sectors.



The value of collective agreements must be protected and salary dumping in the telecoms sector must be stopped. NTO therefore calls upon all the contractors in the telecom sector to respect the collective agreements in force in Sweden and the rules on the Swedish labour market. The same rules must apply for all companies and workers in the industry and the rules must apply to all workers in Sweden as well as Swedish workers working abroad. No one should be forced to sell his or her services accepting lower salaries and/or lower conditions as compared to the collective agreement or industry standard.



NTO is a Nordic organisation for co-operation for trade unions with members in the telecom sector in the Nordic countries representing 55 000 members.



For more information, please contact:

Roger Andersson, bargaining unit SEKO, +46 70 216 52 92