Response to interpellation 2025/26:486 on investment in equal pay within the welfare sector
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
L (1) argues that the parties in the labor market have the primary responsibility for wage formation and that the government protects the Swedish model by avoiding political interference 1. L emphasizes that the government is implementing initiatives to strengthen the supply of skills 1, has fought inflation and provided large economic supplements to the municipal sector 2, and that tax cuts have primarily benefited low- and middle-income earners 3. L believes that political interventions in wages and working hours damage the Swedish model 2 and wants to eradicate unjustified wage differences through tools such as wage mapping 1 3. V (2) believes that the government prioritizes the wages of the wealthy 4. V (3) argues that the government passively accepts structural value discrimination 5. V (5) claims that state funding would strengthen the Swedish model 6. V (6) believes that women in the welfare sector suffer from a structural undervaluation and demand fair wages 7. V (8) wants a reduction in working hours for welfare workers 8 and argues that the government's tax cuts have benefited the wealthiest 8.
Written by AI in advance and may contain errors. The numbers lead to the speech a statement builds on; check against the text below.
Arbetsmarknadsminister och vikarierande klimat- och miljöministern Johan Britz (L)
Mr. Speaker! Nadja Awad has, among other things, asked me about the need for targeted government wage initiatives to counter value discrimination in female-dominated welfare occupations, whether I consider the current wage formation model sufficient to remedy the structural wage differences between women and men within a reasonable timeframe, whether I am prepared to take the initiative for an equality fund or similar initiative, how I intend to ensure that the welfare sector can recruit and retain staff given the relatively low wage levels in many central occupations, as well as what other measures I intend to take to reduce the structural wage differences between women and men in working life.
I would like to begin by thanking the members for the questions and the commitment. I will answer the interpellation from the perspective of my area of responsibility in the government.
Initially, I would like to draw attention to the fact that the wage differences between women and men have decreased during the last two decades. Regarding wage formation, however, the government's starting point is that the parties in the labor market have the primary responsibility for it, something there is a broad consensus on in Swedish society. The government safeguards the Swedish wage formation model, which means that the parties take their responsibility without political interference.
To maintain good quality in welfare, it is important to have an efficient and long-term supply of skills. Issues regarding staffing and skill supply are primarily issues for the municipalities, the regions, and other employers. The Government is implementing several initiatives aimed at strengthening the skill supply so that healthcare and care needs are met throughout the country. In the Discrimination Act (2008:567), there are provisions including requirements for all employers to conduct an annual salary mapping for the purpose of detecting, rectifying, and preventing unjustified pay differences between women and men. The Equality Ombudsman has supervision over that the Discrimination Act is followed.
Questions regarding economic equality are continued priorities for the government. During the mandate period, the government has taken initiative on a number of different assignments aimed at promoting economic equality, including an analysis of how the central collective agreements have been constructed to facilitate the local parties' work with wage issues from an equality perspective.
I look forward to the continued debate on these important issues.
Nadja Awad (V)
Mr. Speaker! Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and his government have salaries that the vast majority of people can only dream of. But they do not want to ensure that all workers also have good wages to live on. They have prioritized making the richest richer.
Ulf Kristersson and his ministers have raised their own salaries. Jimmie Åkesson and members of parliament have raised their own salaries, but Vänsterpartiet has consistently voted no to these salary increases for ministers and members of parliament.
CEOs of healthcare and care companies can turn our tax money into gigantic salaries. They can even earn more than the Prime Minister does. The CEO of the healthcare and care company Attendo, Martin Tivéus, earns 876,500 kronor. The CEO of Ambea, Mark Jensen, earns 550,000 kronor. Capios CEO, Britta Wallgren, earned approximately 18 million kronor during 2022. When Petra Karlsson Ekström, the CEO of ÖBO, the municipal housing company in my home municipality Örebro, took office, she received a salary of 192,000 kronor, and at that time she was even better paid than Sweden's Prime Minister. The CEO of the state-owned company Vattenfall, Anna Borg, has a monthly salary of approximately 1.6 million kronor. The CEO of the train company SJ, Monica Lingegård, earns 551,000 kronor per month.
Mr. Speaker! These are unreasonably high salaries, especially for CEOs of welfare companies, municipal and state-owned companies, which stick in the eyes of all ordinary workers. And above all: When ordinary workers witness that their wage development does not follow the rent increases and the price developments for food, clothes, and medicine, it is perceived as a very great injustice.
Assistant nurses, nursing assistants, personal assistants, bus drivers, childcare workers, student assistants, preschool teachers – those who work within healthcare, school, care, LSS and public transport – have among the lowest wages in the country. Workers in the Swedish welfare system have the lowest wages in the entire EU. A single assistant nurse is dependent on relatives buying clothes for the children. Personal assistants are forced to leave the profession because they can no longer afford it. Preschool teachers may have worked in Swedish schools for 30 years but still have not received a dignified wage development.
We will not be able to entice young people or people who switch careers later in life to want to work in the welfare sector when they know that they will be at the bottom of the wage scale and poor pensioners later in life. People who work in the welfare sector and love their jobs are forced to leave them because they are ruined financially. Furthermore, they risk exhaustion and sick leave along the way, because the workload within the welfare sector is enormous.
At the same time, we face a personnel and skills supply crisis in, for example, elderly care. But across the country where Vänsterpartiet is involved in governing, extra much has been invested in raising wages for workers in the welfare sector. In Gothenburg, politicians froze their own wages to instead invest extra in raising the wages of nursing assistants. In Norrköping, over 2,600 welfare workers benefit from an extra wage increase. In Laxå, a special wage investment is also being made on personal assistants and nurses.
In summary, Mr. Speaker, it is required that the Left Party is involved in governing for the wages in the welfare sector to be raised more than the benchmark. That is what we know. But what have the government and the Sweden Democrats done concretely so that the labor market parties within welfare activities in municipalities and regions shall be given the conditions to invest extra much in workers' wages – especially female workers' wages, which are more disadvantaged?
Ciczie Weidby (V)
Mr. Speaker! I thank the Minister for the answer, but I must say that it also illustrates the very problem.
When women in the welfare sector fall behind in wage development year after year, the government responds once again that it is the parties who are responsible for wage formation and that the government safeguards the model.
But the question is not whether the collective agreements are good or bad, but why the government passively accepts a labor market where women's work is systematically valued lower. We are talking about nursing assistants, childcare workers, healthcare assistants, nurses, and preschool teachers – professions that literally hold our society together. Without their work, elderly care, healthcare, or preschools do not function. Yet it is precisely these professions that repeatedly hear that there is no room for substantial wage increases.
The Minister says that the wage gaps have decreased over time. Yes, they have, but very slowly. At the same time, we know that working women still earn several thousand kronor less per month than men in manual occupations. If we continue at today's pace, it will take a very long time before these differences actually disappear. Is the government really satisfied with that?
It is also strange that the government refers to pay equity assessments and the Equality Ombudsman, as if the problem were individual, unreasonable pay differences. This is about structural value discrimination. The problem is not just that women receive lower pay than men at the same workplace, but that entire female-dominated occupations are valued lower from the very beginning. The government's passivity is not enough here.
Vänsterpartiet proposes a women's wage lift in the form of an equality fund of 30 billion SEK per year for ten years – a targeted state responsibility to raise wages in the female-dominated welfare jobs that society depends on. We want to do this together with the labor market parties – not against them. It is therefore not about abolishing the Swedish model, but about complementing it in areas where it has clearly failed to resolve a historical injustice.
We also know that this is about competence supply. Municipalities and regions are crying out for staff. Many are leaving welfare professions because the salary does not correspond to the workload, the responsibility, and the wear and tear. At the same time, the government stands without concrete answers on how to make these professions more attractive.
I would therefore like to ask the question again to Minister for Employment Johan Britz: If the government actually considers that there is a discrimination of women's wages, why is one then not prepared to use political tools to actually change it? If the government sees the acute staff shortage in the welfare sector, why does one reject targeted wage initiatives that would both strengthen equality and improve the possibilities to both recruit and retain staff?
Arbetsmarknadsminister och vikarierande klimat- och miljöministern Johan Britz (L)
Mr. Speaker! Let me begin by saying that I am very grateful that Nadja Awad is raising the important issue of equal pay within the welfare sector. I also want to thank Ciczie Weidby for her contribution and commitment.
I believe we must start by talking a bit more about the Swedish model. The Swedish wage-setting model is not a buffet where politicians can choose to let the parties handle certain parts and then be involved in other parts. If that happens, the model will not hold over time.
The Government is actively working to achieve the gender equality sub-goal of economic equality – women and men shall have the same opportunities and conditions regarding paid work, which shall provide economic independence throughout life.
According to the Medling Institute, the single most important variable explaining the wage differences between women and men is that they work in different occupations and sectors, which has also been pointed out here. The gender distribution in the labor market can primarily be explained by the fact that women and men largely choose different education.
Statistics Sweden's index for occupational segregation shows that the labor market has gradually become less gender-segregated since 2005. It is positive that the wage difference between men and women has decreased over the last two decades, even though the decrease has stalled in recent years. In 2024, the average wage difference between women and men amounted to 10.2 percent. The standardized wage difference between women and men, taking into account differences in age, education, sector, occupation, and working hours, amounted to 4.6 percent in 2024.
Back to the Swedish labor market model and the view of it. In accordance with that model, it is the parties in the labor market who bear the primary responsibility for wage formation. The Government safeguards this model, and we have very great confidence that the parties take their responsibility to contribute to reducing the wage gap between women and men.
My questions back to Vänsterpartiet are: Do you stand behind the Swedish model for wage formation? In what way do you believe the type of proposal you are putting forward will affect the Swedish wage formation model fundamentally? Are there not great risks in acting in a way that makes the parties feel that they do not bear full responsibility for wage formation in Sweden? What would happen the day they feel that they do not bear full responsibility? Will they then take any responsibility at all?
Nadja Awad (V)
Mr. Speaker! The government does not seem to respect the Swedish model at all when we talk about welfare activities. Our proposal for a women's wage lift concerns welfare workers. It is women who earn 6,000 kronor less per month than a male worker in industry. That is how the figures look today.
The government, with the help of the Sweden Democrats, strikes down the Swedish model precisely when it sends austerity budgets to municipalities and regions so that they, as employers, cannot invest extra much in raising the wages of nursing assistants or childcare workers. And those are the activities we are talking about. Welfare is tax-funded activities that the politicians are responsible for.
It is not possible for Minister for Employment Johan Britz and this right-wing government to absolve themselves of all the responsibility that a government actually has. Municipalities and regions as employers are largely dependent on funding from the state. That is what our entire proposal for a women's wage lift is based on.
We propose that the state, through a targeted investment totaling 30 billion kronor over ten years, reduces the wage gap between female-dominated welfare occupations and male-dominated occupations. It is not about us interfering with the Swedish model. It is about us wanting to support the Swedish model with state funding and end the discriminatory, work-disrespecting wage gap between welfare women who wear out their bodies day in and day out to provide care and nursing in elderly care or to ensure that the bus runs on time. It is that investment we want the government and the Sverigedemokraterna to carry out.
If the government and the Sweden Democrats do not want to invest state funds in the municipalities and regions, they can just say that instead of attacking the Left Party for wanting to dismantle the Swedish model. I think that is a dumbing down of the debate, Mr. Speaker, because nowhere have I, Ciczie Weidby, or the Left Party stated that we want to dismantle the Swedish model. We only want to strengthen it.
Municipalities and regions need to be given the conditions to invest extra much in raising wages, even above the benchmark, for the welfare jobs that are extra neglected. The question remains: What do the minister, the government, and the Sweden Democrats want to do? Does one want to make such a state investment or not? It is only to say it now for our voters who are following this debate.
We will continue to press on this throughout the entire election campaign, because it is an election issue for us in Vänsterpartiet. We guarantee that when Vänsterpartiet is involved in governing, as we do in Göteborg, Norrköping, and Laxå, the wages of nursing assistants and personal assistants are raised. We will ensure that it is done equally across the entire country.
The Minister perhaps wants to make a small revelation about whether one intends to make some similar investment from the state with financial means? In that case, just say it, clearly and distinctly. Yes or no?
Ciczie Weidby (V)
Mr. Speaker! Johan Britz knows very well that this is fundamentally about what kind of society we want and how we actually value professions. For decades, women in the welfare sector have been told that their work is invaluable. But when the wages are to be set, then it is not worth very much at all. It is about the nursing assistant who runs between elderly people in an understaffed facility, the preschool teacher who takes responsibility for our children every day, and the healthcare staff who keep the healthcare system running despite stress and cuts.
All these women who uphold society still have to pay the price for a structural undervaluation of female-dominated professions. In that case, it does not work for the government and Johan Britz to lean back and say that the Swedish model will take care of this and that it will work very well. It just doesn't, Mr. Speaker!
When the market and today's wage formation reproduce inequality year after year, politics must dare to step forward. Politics has done so previously. It was done when the industry was to be restructured. It is done when banks or companies need support. But when working women in the welfare sector demand fair wages, the government says their hands are tied. That is obviously a political choice. Vänsterpartiet does not intend to accept that women in the welfare sector should continue to carry the entire society on their shoulders while simultaneously falling behind economically.
To all the women watching this who are tired of applause but are still waiting to receive fair wages, I want to say that Vänsterpartiet will in any case continue to fight for fair women's wages.
Arbetsmarknadsminister och vikarierande klimat- och miljöministern Johan Britz (L)
Mr. Speaker! Let us begin with the economy in municipalities and regions. It was claimed – it was unclear which word was used – something about a cutback budget or something of the sort. The problem this government faced four years ago was indeed a sharp inflation, which eroded the economic situation of the municipalities and regions. With collectively agreed pension solutions linked to inflation, it meant that the economy became very strained for many municipalities and regions. The most important thing we could do then to secure welfare and secure the employees in welfare was to fight inflation, which we have also done.
After that, we have also made large economic injections into the municipal sector, to both municipalities and regions, plus the economy in the municipal sector now looks significantly better than when we took over responsibility for Sweden.
I will return to the fact that Vänsterpartiet says it wants to support the Swedish model. Then one has to ask whether the parties have asked for that support. One can also call it an interference in the Swedish model from a political side.
This is not the only interference in the Swedish model that Vänsterpartiet advocates for, but Vänsterpartiet also proposes that one should proceed with a reduction of working hours via legislation, which is a central area; working hours is a central area for the Swedish model.
Working hours, wages and other conditions are the central pillars that uphold the Swedish model. If one sets out to have views via law and parliament that a certain group needs to have more in wages, one shakes the Swedish model. If one goes in and says that we in the Swedish Parliament shall decide how long working hours different occupations shall have, one has completely shot the Swedish model to pieces.
Furthermore, a reduction in working hours would mean that many of those who today experience stress and pressure in the Swedish working life would experience even more stress and pressure when more is to be done in even less time.
I believe we have a problem with structural wage differences between men and women. Some of it is due to life choices, and some of it is due to things we cannot explain, which likely relate to gender. We need to do something about that. Step by step, we are also moving closer to a situation where we achieve equal wages between men and women. And we do that through evolution, not revolution.
Nadja Awad (V)
Mr. Speaker! Thank you, Minister, for this debate!
I would like to counter when it comes to the Minister's claim that municipalities and regions have been supported with budgets. I would hardly call austerity budgets as support. The tax has been lowered by 120 billion kronor during this mandate period, which has essentially only benefited the very richest, and thus delivered austerity budgets that have led to at least 130 municipalities across the country bleeding.
It is elderly care that has taken the biggest hit. It is our nursing assistants and care assistants who simply have to run faster between care recipients for a worse salary and a lower pension to live on later. The Liberals want to see more billionaires instead.
Vänsterpartiet wants all welfare workers to receive a reduction in working hours so that they have the energy and opportunity to work a full professional life, and we want them to have wages they can live on. It is not only ministers, politicians, and CEOs who should be given that opportunity, but also the welfare workers.
This is actually what the entire debate has been about from the ground up: funding. Does the government want to take a state responsibility to ensure that our welfare workers, especially women, receive wages to live on? We have received an answer today. It is not prioritized by this government. They, especially the Liberals, have an election promise: They want to see more billionaires and fewer workers who can afford to live.
Arbetsmarknadsminister och vikarierande klimat- och miljöministern Johan Britz (L)
Mr. Speaker! Let me once again emphasize how much I appreciate this debate and discussion. These questions are very important.
We must also be careful about what is correct and what is not. The tax cuts that this government has made have primarily gone to low- and middle-income earners in Sweden. Those people have received more in their wallets, which has created economic freedom for individuals and families. I know that Vänsterpartiet has a somewhat different view on this. The important thing is that the state collects as much money as possible and then portions it out based on what left-wingers in leading positions desire, but that is not this government's policy.
Regarding the work on economic equality, it is significant that there are tools that make these unjustified pay differences visible. This happens, among other things, through pay mapping, as I mentioned earlier. In the Discrimination Act, there are provisions including requirements for employers to conduct an annual pay mapping aimed at detecting, rectifying, and preventing unjustified pay differences between men and women.
In recent years, the government has taken the initiative on a long series of different assignments aimed at promoting economic equality. These range from women's establishment in the labor market, remote work, and how remote work and equality are linked, to analyses of lifetime earnings.
The Government has also tasked Tillväxtverket to, among other things, together with Jämställdhetsmyndigheten, carry out measures aimed at improving the conditions for women's entrepreneurship, ownership, and business operations. Unjustified wage differences between men and women shall we progressively, step by step, eradicate.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.