Response to interpellation 2023/24:419 on trade union rights and Swedish aid
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
The debate concerns trade union rights and Swedish aid. M considers respect for human civil and political rights to be fundamental to Swedish foreign policy 1 and that the government strengthens this work through a new reform agenda 1. M argues that trade, market economy, and entrepreneurship create decent working conditions and are the way out of poverty 1 2 3. M emphasizes that Swedish companies are skilled and that results are more important than the number of meetings 3 4. V argues that trade union rights are a fundamental human right that the government does not mention in its agenda 5 6. V claims that trade alone does not reduce poverty 5 6. V advocates for better monitoring mechanisms 6 and argues that a strong labor movement is necessary to build a welfare state 6 7. V requests a consequence analysis of how the new aid direction affects workers' rights 7.
Written by AI in advance and may contain errors. The numbers lead to the speech a statement builds on; check against the text below.
Statsrådet Johan Forssell (M)
Madam Speaker! Lotta Johnsson Fornarve has asked me in what way I am acting to ensure that the government's reorganization of aid contributes to strengthening the work for human freedoms and rights in the workplace. She has also asked me whether I and the government have conducted any impact assessment of how the changed direction of Swedish aid can affect workers' rights in countries with which Sweden conducts trade and cooperation. Lotta Johnsson Fornarve has also asked whether I intend to strengthen the dialogue with those parts of civil society that work for human freedoms and rights in the workplace and, if so, in what way, as well as whether I intend to raise the issue of violations of human freedoms and rights in the workplace in international contexts, such as the UN, and in bilateral dialogues with relevant states.
Respect for human freedoms and rights is fundamental to Swedish foreign policy and a self-evident starting point in our trade and aid policy. In multilateral forums, Sweden consistently works for the upholding of human freedoms and rights. This includes freedom of expression, freedom of association, and workers' rights. Support for civil society, human rights defenders, freedom of expression, and freedom of association is intimately linked with the defense of workers' rights.
Of the Swedish aid channeled through Sida, approximately one-quarter went in 2023 to the area of human freedoms and rights, democracy and the principles of the rule of law. In addition to this, core support is provided from UD to UN organizations as well as from the Ministry of Employment to ILO. To promote freedom and combat oppression for all individuals is also an important thematic priority within the framework of the government's recently adopted reform agenda for aid.
The government adopted a reform agenda in December last year and a new five-year global strategy for work on human freedoms and rights, democracy and the principles of the rule of law in January this year, where defenders of human freedoms and rights are identified as a particularly prioritized group. With the strategy, the government places a greater focus on the individuals who every day fight for their freedom all around the world.
To create productive employment with decent working conditions, the private sector has a key role. It is therefore important to enable investments in sustainable entrepreneurship in low- and middle-income countries that create decent jobs, lead to economic growth, and enable people to escape poverty. The synergies between trade and aid are therefore a priority for the government.
Many Swedish companies are at the forefront in issues of sustainability and social responsibility. In accordance with the reform agenda, the government now intends to identify sectors where the interests of development cooperation and the business sector coincide and strengthen the work where Swedish companies can contribute with knowledge, innovation, sustainable solutions, and financial resources.
The Government assesses that the work we are now doing to strengthen the synergies between trade and aid, as well as our strengthened focus on human freedoms and rights, democracy and the principles of the rule of law within aid, will also contribute to creating conditions for strengthened rights and decent working conditions for workers.
We have an ongoing dialogue with representatives from civil society, not least to discuss issues concerning human freedoms and rights. UD conducts, for example, regular consultations with civil society ahead of the MR-council's meetings. If there are reasons, I will raise violations of human freedoms and rights in the working life, both in bilateral dialogues and in other contexts.
Lotta Johnsson Fornarve (V)
Madam Speaker! I thank the Minister for the answer to my interpellation.
To be able to organize in free and independent trade unions is a fundamental human right. Despite this, it is still associated with great danger in many of the world's countries. All around the world, brave women and men are dismissed, harassed, imprisoned, and murdered simply because they have chosen to organize in their workplaces and demanded their basic rights. Ensuring workers' rights in the labor market is central to laying the foundation for a socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable development.
If poverty and economic inequalities are to decrease, free trade unions are required to guarantee that economic growth benefits more people and that companies' profits are distributed in a more just way. The gaps between women and men will not be able to be fought if women's rights in the labor market are not ensured.
Attacks against workers are at a permanently high level globally. This is shown by the Global Rights Index 2023, which maps how human rights in the workplace are respected. The index, which is compiled every year by the international trade union federation ITUC, shows a negative development, where freedom of expression is severely restricted and trade union work is associated with life-threatening danger. The report shows that 42 percent of the countries reviewed restrict freedom of expression and organization, which is a sharp increase over the last ten years. Furthermore, workers are prohibited from joining trade unions in 77 percent of the countries, and the right to strike is restricted in 87 percent of the countries. It is also not uncommon for workers to be subjected to violence and arrests, and the report states that trade union activists have been killed in eight countries.
The government has chosen to focus on trade and business within Swedish aid. This undoubtedly involves significant challenges. The situation for workers is very serious in a long line of countries with which Sweden conducts trade and has cooperation with several. This applies, for example, to countries such as Bangladesh, India, several countries in Africa, and so on. This gives reason to specifically review what strategy Sweden has to safeguard trade union rights in international work. Despite this, workers' rights are not mentioned a single time in the government's reform agenda for aid. How can that be? Does the minister not consider trade union rights to be sufficiently important?
The Minister has an over-reliance on the idea that trade and business create jobs and thus prevent poverty. Unfortunately, it is not that simple. 21 percent of all those who have a job in the world today live, despite that, in deep poverty. In Africa, the figure is even higher, where a third live in poverty despite having a job. Youth and women are particularly vulnerable. For trade to benefit sustainable development, efforts need to be targeted to improve living conditions for people living in poverty and oppression and be carried out with respect for human rights and the environment.
Has the government conducted any impact assessment of how the changed direction of Swedish aid can affect workers' rights in countries with which Sweden conducts trade and cooperation? I would like to have an answer to that question, but I do not think I received it. When it comes to contact with the trade union movement, it has, as I have understood it, been largely non-existent when it concerns discussions on precisely trade union rights. Why is that, if this with trade and business is so important? And has the minister, during his foreign trips, taken the opportunity to voice criticism when it concerns precisely deficiencies in trade union rights?
Statsrådet Johan Forssell (M)
Madam Speaker! I thank Lotta Johnsson Fornarve for this interpellation on important issues.
I want to start by repeating what I said in my answer. Sweden provides a very large core support in this context. It is around 40 million kronor to the International Labour Organization, which largely goes to various aid projects in support of human rights in the workplace. Sweden is a very large aid donor. The aid is channeled through several different civil society organizations that Sida works with. These are Union to Union, Swedish trade unions, the Swedish Business Council for International Development, local trade unions in the partner countries, Diakonia, and the Olof Palme International Centre. But it is also organizations such as the International Federation for Human Rights, The International Commission of Jurists, Front Line Defenders, and so on. They often work with these types of issues in this area. They often have in common that they receive support from Sida, even if it might not have sounded that way in Lotta Johnsson Fornarve. But they actually do receive support.
I also want to remind that the government, as recently as just a few months ago, adopted a completely new strategy specifically for the defense of MR-defenders and in support of freedom fighters who operate in many places in the world and where the needs are unfortunately also growing.
We are, therefore, doing a great deal in this area. I do not think we disagree there. On the other hand, I think we might disagree when it comes to the view on companies, on trade, and on entrepreneurship. The question is whether the first thought should always be that there are problems with it, that we should have less of it, that it is dangerous and foreign – a bit of the Left Party's ideology – or whether we should have what I believe is the much more modern view that we have adopted. We see that aid and trade are not two different things, but that they actually go hand in hand and that both are needed.
I do not know how many different trips Lotta Johnsson Fornarve makes to recipient countries of Swedish aid. But I have noted one thing, and that is that wherever I go, it is actually very rarely the case that in bilateral meetings the immediate demand is about aid. Very often, I would say always, is the first question one receives: Can you not invest more in our country? Can your world-leading Swedish companies not come here and create jobs, reduce our need for aid and create investments in our country?
As a matter of fact, we know from all historical experience that countries that succeed in moving from poverty to prosperity do so through precisely trade, through a market economy, through a rule of law, through small business, through entrepreneurship and through innovation – all of which we emphasize in the reform agenda and where we try to find synergies with the trade policy.
In countries that oppress their citizens and that are characterized by large monopolies, we know that the conditions for individual workers are often worse than in market economy countries where one can choose where they want to work and where one can change jobs. It does not have to mean that everything is perfect - it is not. But remarkably often is the situation precisely in those countries that do not have a market economy but have chosen another path, worst of all, both in terms of poverty reduction and when it comes to the situation for individual workers. And it is a situation that the government is now putting a significantly higher gear into to combat, so that more countries can join the path of prosperity with many positive effects also for individual workers.
Lotta Johnsson Fornarve (V)
Madam Speaker! Why are trade union rights not mentioned as an important part of the reform agenda, if the Minister now thinks that these issues are so important? They are actually not mentioned. One can get the feeling that the Minister does not think these issues are important enough.
The Minister also says in his answer that he has had a dialogue with civil society organizations prior to the development of the reform agenda. Prior to this interpellation debate, I have had contact with trade union representatives who do not agree with that. For example, Union to Union says that the dialogue that has been conducted has been conducted together with civil society at large. But in such a dialogue, there is limited scope to speak about the specific orientations of organizations such as trade union rights. Nor have any of the members, such as the three trade union central organizations LO, TCO and Saco, had any bilateral dialogue with the Minister on these issues within international development cooperation.
Shouldn't it be obvious to have a dialogue about trade union rights in connection with aid when the government is now pushing so hard on trade and business linked to aid? Doesn't the minister think that workers' interests are just as important as employers' interests?
The Minister also said in his answer that many Swedish companies are at the forefront in issues of sustainability and social responsibility. I am, however, a bit skeptical about how that matter stands. One can, for example, look at the activities of Swedish clothing giants in countries such as Bangladesh. In Bangladesh, there are today around 3,500 textile factories, where nearly 4 million people, most of whom are women, work for very low wages. The textile sector accounts for the majority of the country's exports and supplies many of Sweden's leading brands. The wages are abysmal and impossible to live on.
This shows that it is not always the case that jobs guarantee a way out of poverty, but it must also be linked to trade union rights and so on. Recently, textile workers went on strike for higher wages but were met by police who even opened fire and killed a number of workers. Furthermore, the clothing companies release masses of toxins that destroy waterways and the environment.
In Bangladesh, eight out of ten seamstresses report that they have witnessed or been subjected to violence or sexual harassment in the workplace, according to a report from Fair Action, which has investigated several Swedish clothing giants. The report shows that five out of six of the investigated clothing companies do not mention gender-based violence and harassment in their human rights risk analysis. It seems to be a bit of a "hit or miss" regarding compliance concerning trade union and human rights among the Swedish companies, even though they say something else on paper.
How is the Minister going to guarantee that trade and businesses that receive aid live up to their commitments regarding trade union and human rights? According to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, companies have responsibility for monitoring and for ensuring that human rights are not violated. The example from Bangladesh speaks for itself: better monitoring mechanisms are needed when it comes to the companies. Unfortunately, the government has removed civil society's opportunity to monitor by largely scrapping the information support. This could otherwise have been used for this purpose, among others.
I wonder if the Minister has been clear in criticizing deficiencies regarding trade union and human rights when he has visited countries such as the Philippines, where it is associated with life-threatening danger to be trade union active. The Philippines is counted as one of the ten worst countries when it comes to precisely trade union rights.
Statsrådet Johan Forssell (M)
Madam Speaker! The Left Party's worldview, as expressed by Lotta Johnsson Fornarve, is very clear: Market economy is wrong, one is skeptical of trade, companies only create problems for workers and so on. Not much has happened with the Left Party's worldview in recent decades - it is like an echo from the past.
Vänsterpartiet is, of course, entirely free to hold that view. I just want to remind of one thing: Actually, all experience shows, as I mentioned in my first speech, that the countries that have succeeded in leaving poverty and reducing the enormous social problems - which are still all too great - have not done so by saying that they will stop trading with others. They have not said that they will stop caring about entrepreneurship and instead develop a planned economy or socialism. The countries that have chosen that path are just as poor today as they were before, or perhaps even poorer.
All countries that have succeeded in making a journey of prosperity, including our own country, have done so because they have realized that there is an incredible creative power in trade, market economy, the rule of law, and entrepreneurship. I have had the great privilege of having many interpellation debates with Lotta Johnsson Fornarve, and I look forward to having many more, but never before have I heard this description from Vänsterpartiet. It is always the same thing: Market economy is wrong, trade is bad, and Swedish companies suck the workers dry. That is roughly how it usually sounds.
I would however like to say that this picture is not correct. It is clear that everything is not blue skies and sunshine here, but Swedish companies are good at what they do. They care about workers and are keen to behave in a decent way. Of course there are exceptions, but that is the general picture. This we also have confirmed time and again. It would have been pleasant if, at least once, there had been room for this perspective in Lotta Johnsson Fornarve's various analyses, but I never hear it. It is strange how it can turn out.
In our reform agenda, we have pointed out the synergies between trade and aid. We believe there is great potential there. To strike a deal in this way is also something that is requested by very many of the recipient countries themselves.
We can observe that many countries that for several decades have received enormous sums in Swedish aid are equally dependent on aid today. In that case, one can either do as one has always done or try to move towards the more modern path that we, like many other European countries of different political colors, have chosen. This is not in contradiction to also providing support to MR-defenders. On the contrary, Sweden provides great support – I do not think Lotta Johnsson Fornarve should claim anything else; the figures I just read out are what they are.
We do not always measure success in how many meetings we hold. It is good to hold meetings, and we hold many meetings, but one must also get things done. I am glad that we have been able to present extensive proposals in our reform agenda, and we will continue to present proposals to develop synergies. We will also continue to point out the importance of human freedoms and rights. These two things are connected, and I am glad that we were recently able to present a completely new strategy on this theme.
Lotta Johnsson Fornarve (V)
Madam Speaker! It was the strong labor movement and the strong Swedish trade union movement that made it possible for us in this country to build up a strong welfare state eventually. It was not primarily thanks to the companies, but it was thanks to a strong labor movement and a strong trade union movement demanding rights that we succeeded in building up a strong welfare state in this country.
That is exactly how one must work in other countries as well. It is not enough to establish companies; one must link the companies to human rights, trade union rights, and guarantees for fair wages and fair working conditions.
That establishing companies in a third country is, as I pointed out in my interpellation, no guarantee that one abolishes poverty. We see clearly in the statistics, for example when it comes to Africa, that a third of those who have a job still live in deep poverty. That says something about the fact that this is more complex than that. This issue must be linked to favorable and sustainable development and improved living conditions for people living in poverty - otherwise, one will not get out of this problematic situation.
I still have not received any good answer as to whether any impact assessment has actually been conducted on how the changed direction for Swedish aid can affect workers' rights in countries where Sweden conducts trade and has cooperation with. I also expect that the minister in the future will have a better dialogue and discussion with the trade union movement regarding specifically trade union rights in connection with the aid. They themselves do not think they have had that. This is a prerequisite if one is now to invest so heavily in linking aid to trade and business.
Statsrådet Johan Forssell (M)
Madam Speaker! Was it the state and trade unions that built up Sweden's prosperity? Partially, but perhaps something is missing in the Left Party's description. There were also some companies that people could work for? Is this not an important piece of the puzzle in the historiography? It is perhaps a bit symptomatic that there is no room for this small detail when Lotta Johnsson Fornarve is to describe how Sweden has become wealthy.
I can only state the following: Sweden is a major donor to many organizations that work with human freedoms and rights, including trade union rights, and will continue to be so. We are keen to maintain a good dialogue, but we do not measure success in the number of meetings but above all in the results. It is precisely the results that have been absent in the previous aid policy, where there was more focus on talking about change than on achieving change. Now we are changing this and breaking new ground.
We also work together with many Swedish companies. We must have confidence in them. They do a good job, and they are often very in demand. I always hear good things about them, and not least, the aid-recipient countries are asking for new Swedish investments in order to be able to leave poverty behind and create a more bearable existence for the people there.
The mere fact that the countries get more companies is no guarantee that they will succeed in breaking the poverty, but one thing we know: It is much easier to succeed in doing this if there are job opportunities, if one has their own livelihood, if one is not always dependent on benefits for one's upkeep and there is no dependency on receiving aid from other countries year in and year out.
There is great potential here. We are now breaking new ground with the new reform agenda for sustainable development, which is what we are talking about. I look forward to having more interpellations debates with Lotta Johnsson Fornarve on how we can together change Swedish aid.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.