According to Susanna Gideonsson, the confederation’s chair, part-time workers take home on average 5,000 kronor less a month, something she said was “an enormous amount of money” for the average worker.  

“It is deplorable, that’s the best way to sum it up,” Susanna Gideonsson, the confederation’s chair, told the TT newswire. “Women in blue-collar jobs have toiled like animals during the pandemic. At the same time, their salaries have lagged behind.” 

She said that many women working in elderly care, as care workers, or in shops were not given full-time contracts, forcing women to make do with low levels of take-home pay. 

“It’s been this way for decades, but very little has happened,” she continued. “A huge number of women working with flexible hours contracts, which means they have to chase as many hours as they can get and always be on their toes so that they can get a salary they can live on.” 

She said that as well as encouraging municipalities, regional health authorities, and private companies to offer more full-time contracts, the government needed to reform parental leave to promote more equal childcare and supply child care outside office hours. 

She said that the poor working conditions and unsociable hours that were common in elderly care and other sectors, made many workers unwilling to work full time, as that would mean losing all their weekends and evenings. 

“The working conditions are so bad at pretty much everyone says, ‘I can’t bear to work full time with that sort of schedule’,” she said. 

Those who work as home-care workers, she said, often have their working day broken up into several small shifts, with unpaid free time in the middle.