Abstract
Article 25 of the Swedish Employment Protection Act stipulates that a person whose employment has been terminated due to lack of work, or redundancy, has the priority right to re-employment: He/she can be preferentially employed again by the same company within nine months of the termination of the contract, provided he/she meets certain conditions. Meanwhile, the staffing industry in Sweden has grown rapidly since its legalisation in 1992. In the 2000s many companies started to use staffing agencies in order to solve labour shortages after job-cuts due to redundancy. Labour unions claimed such employers evaded their responsibilities for workers' right to re-employment by using staffing agencies instead of re-hiring the entitled former employees. The aim of this essay is to study how the priority right to re-employment has been affected by the staffing business in Sweden. Related legislation, legal cases and two new collective agreements concluded in 2010 will be presented and analysed.
