Unravelling Equal Pay - The EC Pay Transparency Proposal in a Swedish Context

This article addresses the Commission’s proposal as to wage transparency and enforcement mechanisms against the context of the Swedish historical treatment of equal pay, the current legislation and case law, and the wage formation procedures of the social partners. The EC proposal challenges the Swedish labour law model in several ways, with the focus here on wage transparency and access to justice mechanisms as empowering individuals. The Swedish approach has been very much characterized by its corporatist labour law model, while the EU and the Commission have been consistently working more and more towards empowering the individual in discrimination claims generally and here with stronger enforcement mechanisms consistent with access to justice