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ge. Though the bargaining take place at both the sector and company level, France had as of 2008, 98% collective bargaining coverage. This is in part because an organization does not have to have any union members working in it to still be legally required to abide by the terms and conditions of the collective agreement. The French system is a tripartite in that the government and the trade unions interact to influence each other's decisions. It is important to note however that many of the collective agreements are below the national minimum wage and do not address the individual pay of workers as they do in other EU countries.
As stated previously, France has an extremely low level of trade union density while still allowing for affective collective bargaining. This however is not the case with relation to employer's organizations. Employer organizations enjoy a relatively high density in comparison to unions at about 75% or three out of every four. As is the case with unions and workers, employer's organizations are voluntary. MEDEF is the largest employer's organization in France but has relatively little bargaining power as a whole, though it is still somewhat powerful in certain sectors such as metalworking. It is hard to gage the overall presence of employer's organizations in France because the self-report with little knowledge available on the accuracy of their reporting.
Sweden, Economic Background:
Sweden's economic history revolves mainly around its late but extremely rapid industrialization. This led to Sweden having very strong trade unions, as well as employer organizations. Swedish politics and economic policy has come from and been almost completely dominated by the Social Democratic Party (Socialdemokraterna) which was in power from 1932 to 2006 with only a very few exceptions. The welfare state plays a major role in the economy in Sweden with a very high level of social protections and large public sector. Sweden's economy is highly export dependant with about 50% of its GDP coming from exports which makes it very sensitive to global demand and financial markets. The 2008 economic crisis hit Sweden very hard leading to high unemployment and low economic growth.
Sweden, IR Trends:
Sweden has been a very interesting and popular place for those researching IR because of its uniqueness and the overall success of its model. Trade union membership in Sweden has been high on almost all accounts since its industrialization. One explanation of this is because of its high trade union membership among white collar workers, where many other countries lack such high trade union membership levels. This high level of union membership started to change ever so slightly in the 1990's. It has however become more significant between 2004 and 2008 and when union membership declined by 8%. This is blamed in part on the fact that unemployment previous to 2007 was distributed by trade unions in which you had to be a member to receive the benefits. However, since 2007 this is no longer the case and young workers are becoming exceedingly more difficult to unionize.
In Sweden there are three main trade union confederations which are separated by skill level and occupation. Firstly, there is a confederation for unskilled and skilled blue-collar workers (Swedish Trade Union Confederation, LO), which often also includes clerical workers and lower grade public service workers. Second, there is one for white