Working hours
Working hours at the university are regulated by laws and agreements. Below are presented essential parts from, among other things, the Working Hours Act and from the local working hours agreements for teachers and T/A staff and their application. In addition, there are images from presentations at member meetings regarding the aforementioned area.
The Working Hours Act contains the following main rules that are important to consider.
- The average regular weekly working hours are a maximum of 40 hours
- Overtime work may not exceed 48 hours during a four-week period or a maximum of 50 hours during a calendar month. Overtime work may not exceed 200 hours during a calendar year.
- The total working hours during a four-month period may not exceed 48 hours on average.
- Employees shall have at least 11 hours of continuous leave during a period of 24 hours, so-called daily rest.
- During a week (i.e. a period of seven days), employees shall have at least 36 hours of continuous leave, so-called weekly rest.
- Shorter interruptions to work in the form of a break (with the right to leave the workplace) must be provided after no more than five hours of work. The employer is also responsible for organizing the work so that necessary pauses can be taken in addition to breaks; unlike breaks, these pauses count as part of working time.
The cental collective agreement (Villkorsavtal-T) regulates a significant part of the conditions on the governmental labour market regarding, among other things, pay, working hours and holidays for members of Saco-S. For example, part-time employees should not have to work additional hours if they have valid reasons for not doing so. Nor may the employer demand overtime from those who are on sick leave part-time, on leave to care for a sick child, etc. The trade union counterpart for the collective agreement is the Swedish Employers' Agency. A novelty in the agreement is the changed and improved rules for so-called additional hours (which applies to those who work part-time) by making compensation payable in the same way as for overtime work. Below is a link to the version of the agreement that applies from 2026-01-01 (in Swedish):
Working hours are regulated locally at the university primarily by two local agreements, a local working hours agreement for teachers and a local agreement for technical/administrative staff. Links to the agreements can be found below (in Swedish):
At the Linnaeus University staff webb there is a page about working hours, which also contains agreements and other regulations related to working hours for teachers and technical/administrative staff, which you can reach via the link below:
Working hours etc. for teachers at Lnu
For a number of years, discussions have been held between employers and the trade unions on the application of the working hours agreement for teachers. A significant part of these discussions has been about the establishment of duty schedules in relation to the local working hours agreement for teachers. In the spring of 2025, Saco-S, together with the other trade union bargaining organization (OFR/S), held a central dispute hearing, which was a follow-up to an earlier dispute hearing regarding the employer's breach of the aforementioned agreement, which concerned shortcomings in the employer's obligation to carry out consultations when establishing duty schedules, when making changes to the schedule, in establishing duty schedules on a calendar year basis and in documenting duty schedules.
A joint management training course on "working time agreements for teachers, service planning and work environment factors related to work planning" was carried out in the autumn of 2025. As a trade union partner, Saco-S has previously developed routines for consultation when drawing up service plans, as well as when revising the service plan during the calendar year. These routines (which you can access via the link below) should mean that service plans will be drawn up to a greater extent in accordance with the local working time agreement for teachers. It is worth noting that it is always the head of department who bears the main responsibility for your service planning, even if the service plan is usually drawn up by the person(s) who plans the service at your department (in Swedish).
Rutin för tjänstgöringsplanering och samråd
During March 2026, the trade unions met to resume paused work on the local working time agreement for teachers. The result so far is that we have recently sent a proposal with our views to the employer. Even though we as trade unions understand that we agree with the employer that the content should not be changed to any great extent, except that the agreement should also apply to those employed as researchers where applicable and that the agreement should primarily be clarified linguistically, we have stated that formulations such as "can", "should" and "in the normal case" need to be written out in more explicitly. However, the most important issues for us concern the application of the agreement, where we see shortcomings in consultation and that many institutions do not plan working hours on a calendar year basis, which is also stipulated in the current agreement. The Saco-S association will therefore work to have a joint group appointed (with representatives of the employer and the trade unions) with the aim of managing and developing the agreement. Our view is that the employer supports this.
In 2024, the Saco-S association held a members' meeting primarily aimed at teachers, which dealt with issues of working hours, duty schedules and Retendo. Below are pictures from the presentation that was made at the meeting (in Swedish):
Arbetstider, tjänstgöringsplaner och Retendo
Working hours etc. for T/A staff at Lnu
In the working hours agreement for T/A staff – where the current version was negotiated at the end of 2022), discussions have been held, among other things, about handling flextime balance and about “prerequisites for the development of both operations and employees and their skills”. Outside the agreement, the employer unilaterally developed principles for working from home during the pandemic. At several other higher education institutions, guidelines for working from home were instead developed, on which the trade unions also had the opportunity to express their views via MBL. The principles for working from home that were developed, which you can reach via the link below, therefore apply to T/A staff but were misinterpreted within parts of the university as also applying to teachers:
https://lnu.se/en/medarbetare/forum/linnaeus-university/principer-for-hemarbete/
In the latter part of 2024, the Saco-S association had a members' meeting aimed at T/A staff, where we (in addition to the then ongoing streamlining of operational support) intended to raise issues about the application of the working hours agreement for T/A staff and principles for working from home. However, images regarding the working hours agreement for T/A staff from this presentation were not shown, since at the meeting we chose to prioritize issues related to streamlining of operational support. However, the images related to the working hours agreement for T/A staff can be reached via the link below (in Swedish):