Together with the trade unions, the Human Resources Department has revised three of KTH's local collective agreements, primarily to clarify critical concepts about working hours.
Stefan Lagervall. Foto: KTH.
The new agreements began to apply from 1 March 2024.
"Agreements benefit from being reviewed and adjusted at regular intervals, and several of the local collective agreements were around ten years old," says Stefan Lagervall, who is head of negotiations at the Human Resources Department and has been responsible for the work from the employer side.
The teacher agreement, the flexitime agreement, and the TA agreement are now updated.
"The flexitime agreement needed to be supplemented with a new paragraph on overtime, which was a requirement from the central parties," says Lagervall and adds:
"At the same time, we have clarified the differences between overtime and flextime, as there are often misunderstandings within KTH.
Another change is that a new provision has been added to the flexitime agreement that allows the manager to shift the employee's working hours, for example, for evening work, but only temporarily and not regularly.
In addition, the old TA agreement has been given a new name, in swedish: Lokalt avtal om arbetstid och arbetstidsberoende ersättningar vid KTH. The level of remuneration for work at extra hours (OB) has been adjusted as well, as it had been stagnant for ten years.
Finally, the teachers' agreement has a more explicit statement that teachers have regulated working hours and that it is, therefore, annual working hours that apply to them.
'There is a widespread misconception at KTH that teachers have non-regulated working hours, which is not true,' says Lagervall and emphasises:
"Stating that teachers have annual working hours is not at all about the employer wanting to increase monitoring and control over them; in some places, it has unfortunately been perceived as such.
Representatives from ST, Saco-S and SEKO have also participated in the work on the new agreements.
Charlotte Hurdelbrink from Saco-S is one of the union representatives who has been part of the joint negotiating group.
What are you most satisfied with in the new local collective agreements?
"Above all, I am pleased that during the work, we have jointly corrected several ambiguities and, thus, opportunities for misinterpretation of the agreements. The hope is that the new wording in the agreements will be easier to interpret and thus follow for both employees and managers.
How do the new agreements contribute to greater clarity about working time for the different target groups?
"The new agreements make it more apparent which service categories/positions are affected by the various working time agreements and what different types of working time, such as annual working time and non-regulated working hours, mean. The new local collective agreements have also been formulated in line with the central collective agreements.
Which agreement applies to whom?
Lokalt avtal om arbetstid och arbetstidsberoende ersättningar vid KTH (the old TA agreement) applies to all employees at KTH who do not have their working hours organised through another agreement or through an individual agreement on, for example, non-regulated working hours.
The teacher agreement applies to those who are employed as teachers or are employed as doctoral students according to the Employment Ordinance. However, the principles of the agreement also apply to other categories of employees insofar as they are engaged in teaching.
The flextime agreement applies to those employees at KTH who have flexible working hours, i.e. the same categories of employees who have their working hours organised in accordance with the Local Agreement on Working Hours and Working Time Dependent Remuneration at KTH.
