LO Sweden launches its International Strategy 2021-2025

The document establishes the key priorities and focus areas for the international cooperation work of the Swedish trade union confederation (LO) and its affiliates.

The Swedish trade union confederation (Landsorganisationen i Sverige, LO) has issued a new international strategy for the years 2021 to 2025. The document describes the solutions that the Swedish unions’ international cooperation can bring to the many challenges that workers are facing around the world.
“The main aim of this strategy is to propose solutions to ensure safe and good working conditions to workers in an increasingly internationalised world,” said Oscar Ernerot, ombudsman/international secretary at LO.

The strategy steers LO’s global solidarity work towards challenging the current power imbalance between labour and capital. It promotes workers’ fundamental trade union rights, including their right to take a greater share of the globalised economy’s added value.

LO and its affiliates have identified four focus areas on which they will put their development cooperation efforts: workers’ rights, equality, gender equality, and climate and sustainable transition.

In support of this work, the strategy highlights four key formal structures and tools: the International Labour Organization, the OECD’s Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, the multi-stakeholder initiative for social dialogue and inclusive growth Global Deal and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. From the latter, LO underlines the relevance of three SDGs: “For LO, Goal 8 on sustainable economic development and decent working conditions is particularly important, together with Goal 5 for gender equality and Goal 10 for equality to balance the globalised economy by implementing the ILO’s Decent Work Agenda”.

Furthermore, the strategy takes a deeper look into the role of LO’s affiliates as actors of international cooperation and how they should relate to civil society organisations. The document also covers the challenge of climate and sustainability, and the central issue of Just Transition schemes to protect impacted workers from being left behind.

The international work of LO and its affiliates is based on the Trade Union Development Effectiveness Principles. The Swedish trade unions collaborate in both bilateral and multilateral international cooperation projects with trade unions and labour organisations in a great number of countries.

 

 


For more information
Contact Oscar Ernerot, LO Sweden
oscar.ernerot[@]lo.se