Activity report July 2024 – April 2025

1. The Association, the Board and the Secretariat

The Saco-S Association at Uppsala University represents approximately 3,900 members in 18 Saco unions. The 2024 Annual General Meeting was held on 23 April, in Fries Hall and via Zoom. The following board was elected for the financial year 2024/2025:

Lars Madej (chair), Henning Henschel (vice chair), Petra Eriksson, Thomas Ekstrand, Banafsheh Seyyed Khezri, Cecilia Lindholm, Nadja Duffner-Ylvestedt, Johan Åhrgren and Samuel Wenell were elected as ordinary members. Mr Robert Malmgren was elected as an alternate member.

Thomas Ekstrand resigned during the year.

The Board meets every week during term time. Minutes are taken every time the Board has a quorum, which is when at least half of the members are present. The Saco-S Association's Board can appoint trade union representatives to specific tasks, such as representatives on boards and committees or to fulfil a particular task. Those who have a special task are called secretariat and, during the year, these have been:

Charlotte Swenning Leyser, Mahbubur Rahman, Kirsi Höglund, Julie Hansen and Jun Mei Hu Frisk.

The University also has six so-called local Saco-S associations. The local-local associations have no negotiating mandate and cannot make decisions, but Saco-S can seek the help of the associations when it comes to matters that take place at the department or area of activity. The local-local associations are:

• Företagsekonomiska institutionen
• Universitetsförvaltningen
• Statsvetenskapliga institutionen
• Teologiska institutionen
• Universitetsbiblioteket
• Ångströmlaboratoriet

2. People with union trustee's time

The following people are on leave without salary deduction for union work. The union trustee's time varies between 1 % and 100 %, and may also vary during the year. The union trustee's time is negotiated with the HR director at Uppsala University before each academic year and additional times during the academic year if the need arises. During the business year, the total time for the Saco-S Association's union trustee time has varied between 620 % and 760 % of the approximately 800 % that we have at our disposal.

Table 1, union trustees in the board and the office during the business period.

Note: The Board has co-opted Ulrika Persson Fischier to the Board to continue to deal with a member case that she originally undertook during her time as a member of the Board in the business year 2023/2024.

Table 2, union trustees in local-local associations during the business period.

3. Negotiations

3.1. Recruitments, salaries for new employees and notice of termination

Information about recruitments with titles, work content and employment requirements comes in an Excel list once a week. In cases where the Saco-S Association has comments on the content, we send an email with questions. We rarely get answers to whether or how the employer utilises our questions and opinions.

The recruitment of managers and adjunct lecturers takes place seperately.

Salaries for new employees are not compiled anywhere, but the Saco-S Association is referred to look up the information via Primula. It gives us no opportunity to follow up that the employer complies with the agreement that exists on the 10th percentile.

Notice of termination for temporary employments are handled via Primula for the entire university. There are still some problems with the handling of notices among operational HR (VHR). The Saco-S Association has good contact with VHR in these matters.

3.2. Redundancy/lack of work

Redundancies and relocations are negotiated almost every week in connection with the so-called Thursday negotiations. The most common redundancy concerns researchers, which is based on a practice at Uppsala University of hiring research staff on a permanent contract from day one if there are research funds that last more than two years. When the funds in the project run out, lack of work arises in the project, which means that lack of work are common within this group. Often, the tasks are so specific in terms of research that the circling (Swedish: kretsning) will only include the researchers in question. In connection with the early relocation trials, the researchers are tested for advertised and not yet announced positions at the university. The Saco-S Association's role in this is to support the member and review the process of 1) establishing that there is a lack of work, 2) circling and 3) relocation investigation.

Unfortunately, negotiations concerning redundancy at the University Library also started at the end of the financial year. This negotiation is ongoing at the time of writing, which means that further information cannot be provided due to the confidentiality of the negotiations.

3.3. New organisational placement (NOP)

Negotiations regarding changes in position and salary are negotiated seperately. The Saco-S Association will contact the person concerned if it is a member to make sure that everything is in order. These are managed on an ongoing basis by the board.

3.4. Salary review 2024

Negotiations for the 2024 salary review began on 5 November and continued until 29 November. The doctoral salary ladder were negotiated before the other salary review began.

3.5. Business plans

The Saco-S union has negotiated the University's business plans down to faculty level. In this year's business plans, as in the previous business year, we have particularly emphasised work environment issues and competence provision for all employees.

3.6. Collective agreement negotiations

3.6.1. Remote work agreement

During the business year, the Board negotiated a collective agreement on remote working. Unfortunately, this was something that the employer did not want and therefore no such agreement could be signed.

3.6.2. Termination of the Local Collective Agreement on the conditions for saved holidays and on holidays with teachers and others, dnr 2013/2694

The local collective agreement that provided for teachers to have standardised vacation time was recently terminated by the Saco-S union. This is because the standard vacation has been used in several cases in a way that has disadvantaged members. Examples of this include members not being able to take vacation or being forced to attend meetings in the days between Christmas and New Year. The employer is interested in having a standard vacation agreement and wants to start negotiations on a new agreement. If this happens, the Board will consult members on their views on a possible new agreement.

3.6.3. Agreement on working hours for technical administrative staff

The employer has continued to describe the needs of the organisation, but negotiations on the content of the agreement have not started.

3.7. Transition dialogue

Saco-S, together with OFR/S and Seko, has a monthly dialogue with the employer regarding redeployment funds. The discussions have concerned the types of initiatives that the funds can be used for and how to handle the proposals submitted to the employer.

3.8. Relocation of Commercial Law

The subject Commercial Law is being moved from the Department of Business Studies to the Department of Law, which also means a change of faculty. Saco-S has negotiated how the conditions for the move will affect employees, both those who move to the new department, those who remain and those at the receiving department. In the negotiations, there has been a strong focus on the work environment and possible financial consequences and how it could affect employees. We also called for central negotiation, i.e. SULF was centrally involved in the negotiations, as there were several ambiguities that needed to be clarified before the negotiations could be concluded.

3.9. Doctoral students' prolongation

Saco-S and OFR/S have pursued the issue of the management of doctoral student prolongation. At present, this varies greatly from one department to another, and different models are used to calculate the prolongation. The starting point is that all doctoral students should be treated in the same way regardless of which department they are employed at. Work on this is ongoing and we have stated that the University needs to develop centralised guidelines and templates for doctoral students' prolongation.

3.10. Relocation of departments to Campus Gamla Torget

The employer has initiated a major relocation of departments in order to get more coverage on Campus Gamla Torget. Different departments will be affected to varying degrees by this, some positively and others negatively. Saco-S has been involved in ensuring that the work environment and conditions, among other things, by ensuring that the safety representative organisation can participate as appropriate, but also by discussing and negotiating with the employer about the organisational change.

3.11. Better utilisation of Segerstedthuset

The University Administration is facing cost-cutting requirements and, as part of this, the employer intends to make better use of Segerstedthuset. This means that departments/units currently operating in other premises will be moved to Segerstedthuset, that some areas will be rebuilt to be used more optimally and that it will be investigated whether external tenants can rent parts of the premises. This has been negotiated on an ongoing basis in close cooperation with the local association at the administration and safety representatives. Negotiations will continue in the coming financial year and Saco-S will receive regular information from the employer on how the work is progressing.

3.12. Reorganisation of University IT Services

University IT Services has an ongoing reorganisation where the new organisation is expected to be in place by the autumn. This has meant continuous information from the employer and ongoing negotiations, usually every two weeks, but sometimes every week.

3.13. Other negotiations during the year

Saco-S, together with the other employee organisations, conducts recurrent negotiations mainly under the MBL and LAS every Thursday for most of the year. A summary of some of the most common types of negotiations is given below:

• 68 negotiations on redundancy
  
• 13 negotiations for an acting manager (some of these are
• extensions of appointments) or appointment of a manager
  
• 11 hiring of a consultant, e.g. economist when recruitment of a replacement has failed 9 reorganisations

4. Other activities

4.1. Advice and support for individual members

An important part of the work of the Saco-S organisation is to provide members with advice and support on issues that are important to them. A large proportion of the issues are of a labour law or work environment law nature. Some of these conversations stop at conversations in confidence. A smaller part turns into so-called membership cases where
The Saco S union provides support or ultimately negotiates working conditions for members. In addition to short-term counselling, Saco-S has concluded over 100 member cases during the financial year. The Saco-S association also provides advice and support in connection with the setting of new salaries and in connection with salary reviews.

4.2. Work task plans

According to the collective agreement, service plans for all teachers must be submitted to Saco-S before the start of the period to which the plans relate. Following dispute negotiations during the 2023/2024 financial year, there has been an improvement in the reporting of service plans from the institutions that were previously late with this or did not submit the service plans to Saco-S. However, some problems remain and the work to improve the departments' rosters has been further developed during the financial year.

As in the previous financial year, the work during the operational period has mainly focused on the institutions submitting their service plans on time and formalising deviations from the agreement through agreements or negotiations. Through this work, we have also recognised situations where teachers have worked large amounts of overtime, which the employer has now begun to address.

4.3. Salary surveys

The Saco-S union participates in the joint work on the pay survey at the university. The assignment is to analyse pay differences between women and men who perform the same or almost the same tasks and between equivalent jobs. The entire pay gap must be explained in a factual manner. This year's pay survey is ongoing.

4.4. Notifications

In many cases, employers are obliged to give Saco-S notice of termination of employment on behalf of our members. We use this information to be able to contact these members and check that everything is in order, that they are aware of the situation and that we can be of service in some way.

4.5. Safety representatives

Safety representatives are elected by the employees at a workplace and then appointed by the trade union to which they belong. The Saco-S association is involved in the training of newly elected safety representatives, and works on this issue together with the HR department.

4.6. Continuing professional development

The Board is constantly working on further training to be able to support members as well as possible and work for better conditions at the university. All members of the Board have completed at least trade union training stages 1 and 2. The majority have also completed trade union training stages 3 and 4. In addition to this, various members have attended themed courses with a bearing on trade union work, such as Högskoleekonomi (University Economics) or Hat och hot inom akademin (Hate and Threats in Academia). Board members participate in trade union network meetings to keep abreast of what is happening in the higher education sector in Sweden.

5. Representation in various committees and boards

Note: Some representatives have been appointed by Seko or OFR/S. In these cases, only the organisation to which the representative belongs is stated.