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This thesis focus on the priority right to re-employment in Section 25 of the Swedish Employment Security Act (LAS). The study highlights how power relationships between employers, trade unions and employees with the priority right to re-employment are constructed in the Regulation, and what consequences these relationships have for an employee with the priority right to re-employment. A further aim was to analyse the practical application and function of this Regulation in society.

Analysis of the regulation indicates that the managerial prerogative has the strongest position when an employee terminates employment due to scarcity of work or when management decides how to meet new manpower needs. The individual employee is subordinated to both employers and trade unions collective interests and power. Analysis of the Regulation in practical applications indicates that, in the period under study, one-third of the employees with priority right to re-employment were rehired pursuant to Section 25 of LAS. The findings also indicate that 10 % of salaried employees were rehired with reference to the same Section. The most common explanation given for not rehiring an employee was insufficient qualifications.

The “flexicurity” concept has been advocated in the European Union. This concept involves a shift from employment security in relation to a single employer to employment security in relation to the labour market as a whole. This development may affect the function of the priority right to re-employment. If protecting established employees’ employability were indeed a political goal, this would presume changes or supplementary adjustments in Swedish jurisprudence. Such adjusted regulation should focus on the individual employee, not only in terms of retaining existing employment and/or return to prior employment, but in the requirement to be employable on the labour market as a whole.