A major difference between our labor law to his Swedish counterpart is the difference between legal standards and norms. In other words, the difference distinguishing the statutory rules, developed primarily by the parliamentary rules of collective origin, developed by unions and companies in the negotiations. Whereas in France the legislature holds the reins, at least traditionally, labor standards, Sweden provides virtually complete freedom to the social partners.
Remember, France is not totally absent from collective bargaining, on the contrary. Collective agreements, that is to say these contracts after tough negotiations between employers and employee representatives, contain a large number of rules aimed at employees and are the daily routine of every legal expert on the subject. But the question that may decide the social partners, there is often a limited response to legal origin. In other words, there are often minimum thresholds set by the legislature, and below which the social partners can not fall. The example of the salary is eloquent: the minimum wage is identified annually by the legislature, establishing the Labour Code respecting the minimum wage. Of course, nothing prevents the social partners to agree on a minimum wage above the minimum wage, which must therefore be applied for lack of not respecting collective agreements. But this exemption does not therefore be made in a manner favorable to the employee, that the doctrine has called for principle in the hierarchy of labor law.
But Sweden, a strong social dialogue historically anchored, has a very favorable system for the social partners. The question of wages, to use this example illustrates: there is no minimum wage Swedish posed by the law. Only there are minimum thresholds set by collective agreements. Thus it is theoretically possible to modify "the urge" the wages of Sweden, in other words in accordance with the agreement between the parties. In general, say that in the Scandinavian Labour Code does not exist and leaves the lion's share to community standards. This sign is probably a social success, the culmination of a model based on the logic of compromise and responsibility collective.
This brilliant model of collective vitality has not been a consistent story and quiet, though. In the early 1990s, Sweden has suffered an economic crisis which some have identified a cause in the failure to reform a model of collective bargaining. Wages were negotiated over the rise, to summarize the main idea, while times of austerity necessary. The Swedish economist Lund Christer fell fairly, in a paper written in 1991 - Recent Trends in collective bargaining in Sweden The crisis in Of The Swedish model - he would decide between two alternatives. The first, a continuation of the Swedish classic, imply a collective responsibility given to the taste of monetary necessities. Second, because new market-based, involve using variable supply and demand to adjust salaries. While the first solution would maintain a centralized collective bargaining, the other way tends more to the breakup and dispersion model. Now retroactively it appears obvious that the second path has been borrowed. It also a general trend affecting Europe in the 1990s, as noted in the interesting report Supiot 1999 - Beyond Employment, under the direction of Alain-Supiot. Bargaining levels undergo a double movement of localization and internationalization of the fact of globalization. France and Sweden have not been spared.
Finally, the strength of the Swedish collective standards is certainly largely in the degree of collective investment of its employees. To compare France and Sweden in 2006, according to OECD statistics, the unionization rate is 8% for one and 80% for the other, or a distortion quite spectacular. Without doubt can we regret the French weakness in this area, which probably tends to empty the unions of their legitimacy in terms of the collective imagination. In any case difficult to envisage a purely legal change to redress the balance. The collective sense of ownership seems at first a challenge social condition of a collective game stimulated.
A very interesting link on the subject -and French-.
Lund to the French. 
