As noted our colleagues from Courrier internationalciting le journal suédois Hudiksvaal Newspaper, it all starts at the end of 2023, when employees of the municipality of Hudiksvall, located 300 km north of the capital Stockholm and with 300,000 inhabitants, were deprived of their traditional free coffee. Since December 2023, a salary deduction of between 20 and 150 Swedish crowns (between 1.70 and 13.20 euros) has been applied for grain aficionados.
The day after this article was published, the municipal workers’ union magazine Kommunaal Arbetaren presents the figures for this custom, after surveying the municipalities and regions of the country. And the observation is clear: many municipal administrations have withdrawn this pleasure from their employees, and cases of discrimination between regions and municipalities are emerging.
In the 246 municipalities surveyed out of the 290 in the country, almost one employee in four has to pay for their coffee; and workers in the fields of health, early childhood and education are further left behind.
For their part, regional civil servants and employees are much less affected by this phenomenon since 94% of them benefit from this free coffee. A difference in treatment between municipalities and regions that makes one cringe…
Necessary budget cuts
Strongly under pressure due to inflation, many Swedish municipalities are seeking to save money by any means possible. As noted our colleagues from the newspaper Le Mondeciting figures from the local government association SKL, “Twenty-one regions and a third of Sweden’s 290 municipalities ended the year with finances in the red […] And 2024 is expected to be even worse, with the deficit falling from 6 billion crowns to 31 billion (from 52 million to 2.71 billion euros).“
Enough to lead to budget cuts in many areas, but certain measures are having difficulty passing. Coffee is not the only example. Other small welcome bonuses for employees have been withdrawn, like the fruit baskets that previously appeared in health centers in Stockholm. These had been removed just before Christmas by the region’s health authorities, who believed that these baskets were “not necessary for the production of care“. The health authority finally reversed course two days later and re-offered these baskets to healthcare staff after strong criticism from employees and unions.
THE communities should be ashamed if they don’tcannot offer coffee to their employees. It’s pitiful.
Ce “coffee street” and the resulting reactions could here also lead to a backpedaling of the municipalities if the protest is felt. The president of the Swedish Union of Municipal Workers (Kommunal) was particularly indignant in the columns of the Expressen newspaperindicating that “oMaking coffee is the least an employer can do. Especially for nannies and caregivers who have difficult jobs.” She also denounced the fact that “the coffee is a small amount for the employer, but it has a lot of symbolic value. It also sends a very bad signal that you differentiate between your employees and the ‘white cabbages’ who don’t have to pay for their coffee. For the union leader, “THE communities should be ashamed if they don’tcannot offer coffee to their employees. It’s pitiful.”
In this Nordic country where coffee is not a simple hot drink but a symbol, the authorities risk having something to grind to ease tensions, while achieving the economies of scale necessary for the good budgetary management of municipalities .
And the municipalities would have every interest in keeping this little extra granted to their employees. According to Swedish psychologist Oskar Henriksonthe simple gesture of offering a coffee would increase work motivation and employee loyalty.
2024-01-20 12:32:44
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