A free fighting union since 1910

Even if you have come to Sweden only recently, you have the same rights at work as anyone else in the country. Some companies that employ migrant workers and undocumented migrants exploit their employees. They may not pay wages and break the law – often, over and over again. The companies can get away with this as long as the workers do not know their rights and cannot stand up for them. To do that, you need to act through a labor union.

When you are a member of an SAC local (LS), active members help each other and defend their rights at work so that your boss cannot fire you, cheat you out of your wages or expose you to dangerous working conditions.

Gothenburg’s Local of SAC (LS) coordinates the union acitivity in all business branches in Västra Götaland and supports the organization of members in operative sections (“driftssektioner”), both in the long- and short term.

By uniting with other operative sections and members of our LS, we can split the labour of graphic design, legal advice, digital infrastructure and have a shared economy and strike fund collectively, thereby easing the burden of organizing a large scale union without sacrificing our local autonomy. Through shared communication platforms and meetings, we’re able to talk with and learn from comrades in other workplaces and have each other’s backs in collective actions.

An operative section (“section” for short) is a union local to a specific workplace, uniting all workers there except the bosses.

The term refers to the long-term vision that employees should take over and operate the workplace themselves – for who can know the workplace better than those keeping it running? The section is the syndicalist equivalent to the more centrally run union chapter of the other major unions LO, TCO and SACO.

All operative sections are autonomous in their organization but are of coursed backed up by the rest of LS and SAC whenever needed.

The Central organization of Swedish Workers (SAC) is a coordination body of all of Sweden’s Locals of SAC (LS). They’re a relatively small, but disproportionately active union. Despite having only 3500 members in 2024 (~0.1 percent of all union members in Sweden) they were responsible for all of 55 percent of all cases in the labour court – more than LO, Saco and TCO combined!

SAC welcomes all workers and always stands up for the common interests of the workers against the employers. Since it’s founding in 1910 the SAC has been a union of members, for members – and so it will remain. The purpose is to tend to our common interests on the labour market as workers.

In Sweden, most workers are members of one of the trade union confederations LO, TCO or Saco. SAC differs from them both in terms of the methods we use and in our handling of internal democracy. Contrary to their top-down bueaucrat-run structure, in SAC it is the members who run the union. We as workers know what problems we have in the workplace and we are the ones who should decide what battles to fight and how to improve our workplaces.

In SAC we also organize everyone in the same workplace in the same union (except bosses), regardless of one’s line of work. Read more on who can become a member here.

SAC skiljer sig från andra centralorganisationer både vad gäller de metoder vi använder för att organisera oss med våra arbetskamrater och i hur vi hanterar den interna demokratin. Både LS och driftssektioner beslutar själva i sina egna frågor och tillsammans i gemensamma frågor, exempelvis kring hur centralorganisationen ska fungera. Med andra ord har SAC inga pampar i Stockholm som kan säga åt oss vad vi får och inte får göra – vi bestämmer själva hur vi jobbar på våran arbetsplats.

Inom SAC organiseras dessutom alla på samma arbetsplats, under samma chef, oavsett yrkesuppgift. Alla ska vara med i samma fack för största möjliga makt att påverka. Vi har samma intresse oavsett yrkesgrupp. Läs mer om vem som får bli medlem här.