Organising Tech in Sweden
Organising Tech in Sweden is a limited podcast series about union organising in Swedish tech companies. It features conversations with people involved in campaigns to win collective bargaining rights at Klarna and Spotify. Through these discussions, it examines efforts to build worker power in Sweden's tech sector.
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Trailer
Union organising seems to be in the air these days, as tech workers wake up and realise that they are, in fact, workers. Here in Sweden, it's no exception. Join us as we sit down with some of the people involved in organising two of Sweden's foremost tech unicorns, Klarna and Spotify. This is Organising Tech in Sweden.To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit theepisode page. Be
Organising Klarna - Part 1
We kick off Organising Tech in Sweden in style by recounting the story of how a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) was won at Klarna, a major Swedish fintech. In fact, Klarna was the first unicorn in Sweden to be unionised (and probably the first unicorn in Europe as well)!To hear all about how this went down, your co-hosts Josh and Ray are joined by Thomas, the founder of the Klarna Unionen Cl
Organising Klarna - Part 2
We finish our conversation with Sen, Thomas, and Kim about how a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) was won at Klarna. In this episode, we cover the impact of immigrant workers on organising, the impact of organising on organisers, and the impact of strikes on negotiations. All of this and a happy ending too!To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit theepisode page. Be sure t
The Swedish Model
We're delighted to welcome former Klarna employee and labour law expert Kim back to the show to explain the Swedish Model (which we're assurred has nothing to do with ABBA). We discuss how it came to be, what makes it different to how labour regulations work in most countries, whether startups need collective bargaining agreements, and what lessons we can take from it and apply to other countries.
Organising Spotify
Henry, founder of the Unionen club at Spotify, and Ralf, current vice chair of the club, tell the story of organising efforts at Spotify, educate us on organising strategies, and warn us against taking shortcuts. A CBA hasn't been won yet, but the saga of Spotify is far from over!To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit theepisode page. Be sure to follow us on Twitter, BlueSky,
The Union Perspective
Per Holfve, an advisor with Naturvetarna (the Swedish Association of Professional Scientists), talks about how scientists fit into labour organising in tech, the importance of listening to both workers and employers when building an organising campaign, competing with Netflix for people's valuable free time, and combating gender and racial discrimination in the workplace. We get into how demograph
The Local Club
Sen Kanner, former chairperson of the Unionen club at Klarna and Henry Catalini Smith, former chairperson of the Unionen club at Spotify, are back to tell us all about what it takes to run a local union club. We look at what positions there are on the board, what the responsibilities of the chairperson are, how to get people engaged and involved, and how to be a leader without burning yourself out
Organising Games
Hanneli Lindholm from Engineers of Sweden is here to talk about games! We look at the progress that has been made so far, what's going on in the mines of Mojang, how unions can cooperate internationally to ensure that Swedish unions can build on victories won on the other side of the globe, get into the nuts and bolts of how academic unions like Engineers of Sweden and the Swedish Association of P
Organizing for Power
Our guest this week is none other than Ethan Earle, General Coordinator for Organizing for Power, a training program for organisers that Ethan co-founded in 2019 alongside legendary organiser Jane McAlevey (may she rest in power). O4P has trained more than 40,000 people from 1,800+ organisations in 115 countries over the 5 years of its existance on the core fundamentals of organising and how to wi
Organizing for Freedom
We thought the season was over, but the wins keep coming, so we decided to drop an episode to celebrate another one, this time with the mastermind behind the Klarna and Spotify campaigns: Unionen negotiator Björn Larm!Björn breaks down the five year effort to sign a collective bargaining agreement with Apple Retail, what the workers wanted, and what they missed out by not having the CBA in place w
Compensation
Friend of the podcast and finance geek Kim Öberg is back on the show, this time to walk us through two common forms of non-salary compensation in Sweden: restricted stock units (RSUs) and qualified employee stock options (QESOs). Kim introduces the important terminology needed to understand equity compensation and highlights the risk factors that workers are often unaware of. By the end of this ep
