
The government, together with the Sweden Democrats, will put forward a proposal for a new social security fund where income, and not the time worked, should be the basis for the insurance. The government calls it "the biggest reform of Swedish unemployment insurance in 40 years".
The proposal is met with mixed reactions. LO calls it a "disaster" and says it is unfair and takes from already weak groups. The proposal includes, among other things, lowering compensation levels for those who have been unemployed for a long time.
A-kassan is an insurance that provides compensation to those who become unemployed. By paying a fee to the unemployment insurance fund, you are entitled to financial support for a certain period of time if you lose your job. Today, you are entitled to compensation for 300 days if you lose your job. After 300 days, you can receive activity support if unemployment continues.
The proposal includes except that the compensation should be based on income, instead of hours worked as it is today. It should make it easier for people with a weak anchorage in the labor market to qualify for unemployment insurance. It should also reduce the paperwork for employers.
Rapid reduction of the unemployment insurance fund
According to the proposal, the compensation from the social security fund must gradually decrease after 100 days. After 200 days, it must be scaled down even more. According to the government, the purpose is to increase the drive to return to work. The activity support for those who participate in the job and development guarantee must also be scaled down by 5 percentage points every 100 compensation days.
- Today's social security fund needs to be reformed to, among other things, have a clearer line of work, says Labor Market and Integration Minister Johan Pehrsson (L) at a press conference.
Pehrsson believes that with today's system you can go on social security for several years with relatively high compensation, and that this means that the incentives to look for new work are reduced.
- The A-cash should be a springboard to new opportunities, not a hammock where you risk getting stuck for a long time.
A high compensation ceiling does not help
The government also proposes an increase in the compensation ceiling. The details of the proposal are not clear, but the new social security fund is based on an investigation that the previous government received over three years ago. LO criticized the investigation when it was presented in 2020. The criticism was already based on the fact that an income condition creates injustice as a person with a high salary reaches the income requirement more easily than a person with a low salary.
LO's agreement secretary Torbjörn Johansson tells the newspaper Arbetet that the stricter reduction in compensation levels is a disaster for a large part of LO's members. He says that it is certainly good that you raise the top level, but is critical of the fact that it is financed by taking from those who are already having a hard time in a tough economic situation with inflation and recession.
- Basically all of our groups are losing money on this.
He says that some of LO's groups will lose over 2000 kroner a month. He believes that the only people who will benefit from the proposal are those who have a salary of over 30000 a month.
The new social security fund is proposed to enter into force on 1 October 2025.
Text: Erik Edlund
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They are certainly always hardest to survive in an unequal society for those at the bottom. But the problem is the unequal society which
- makes all cooperation more difficult
- makes economic development worse
– creates increased illness in everyone, even the rich, and (as Göran Therborn writes)
– “premature death, ill health, humiliation, submission, discrimination, exclusion from knowledge and ordinary social life, poverty, powerlessness, stress, uncertainty, anxiety, lack of self-confidence and pride, and exclusion from opportunities and life chances.”
Of course, it is the poorest who have the greatest motivation to change conditions. But most of us are affected by the increasing inequality and have an interest in turning against its authors.
I would like to see LO go ahead. But that is not to be hoped for.
Agree with. We must carve away the legacy of Ayn rRnd and her idea that it is the exploiter who is the productive force of society. We must throw away the mist curtains of Milton Friedman that gave Rand's evil tanacre a false veneer of scholarship.
I didn't say that. People are welcome to start companies for me. And if they produce reasonable stuff, I'm happy to give them some credit. I am simply saying that it is inequality that is a kind of radical evil.
I don't care if someone earns 10.000 more than me a month, but when it reaches such levels that people live in completely different worlds, society is torn apart, see above.
Agree with.