All laws now up to date!

2024-06-25

Henry

A few weeks ago I mentioned that preparations for updating the English translation of the Work Environment Act were complete. Even more good news now: not only is 666a's English translation of the Work Environment Act now completely up to date, but so is the English translation of the Working Hours act!

As far as I'm aware, right now 666a is now the only place on the web where you can get an up-to-date English translation of Sweden's four most important labour laws. The ones on government.se are still out of date. And in the case of the Work Environment Act, more than a decade out of date.

My favourite thing I learned in the process of updating these translations was in Chapter 7 Section 16 of the Work Environment Act.

The market surveillance authority may procure a sample of goods under a hidden identity according to Article 14.4 j of Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 only if necessary to achieve the purpose of the inspection.

It grants Swedac the power to order stuff under false names in order to verify compliance with quality and safety requirements. This is an implementation of an EU law, and it just stuck in my head because you don't tend to think of quality assurance as a form of espionage, but it actually makes a huge amount of sense when you think about it!

Also found it interesting because I don't think it really seems to belong in the Work Environment Act at all. It certainly has nothing to do with anyone's work environment. I think it seems to have been shoehorned in here for convenience due to its similarities with e.g. Chapter 7 Section 5, maybe to avoid the work of creating a separate Market Surveillance Act or something. I think software engineers have more in common with the people writing laws than any of us might have thought!

Next up, I think I'd like to rescue the Parental Leave Act and the Annual Leave Act from the Swedish government's PDF compost heap. There's nearly a decade's worth of updates missing from the most recently published English translation of the Parental Leave Act too, so that one's going to take a minute or two to get polished and shipped on here.