An annual report is a summary of what an association has accomplished over the past year. The report covers both the association's activities and the management of its assets. It is written by those appointed to be responsible for day-to-day operations and decision-making, typically the association's board. On this website, we refer to the document we present as an annual report, although it may be known by slightly different names, such as "Board report...", "Report on activities...", or "Annual report for…”
The annual report consists of two main parts: a report on what has happened within the association and what it has accomplished, and a report on how the association's assets have been utilised and managed, i.e., a financial report.
Trade unions belong to a category of organisations known as non-profit associations. These kinds of organisations have never been subject to any specific legislation. However, since 1999, Swedish non-profit associations have also been subject to the Accounting Act (bokföringslagen) if their assets exceed a particular limit. Consequently, the financial report must comply with laws and regulations and therefore take a specific form. Here, too, a distinction is made between large and small organisations. Large organisations submit what is known as an annual report, while small organisations submit yearly accounts. Organisations that are so small that the Accounting Act does not cover them can decide for themselves what form their annual financial report should take.
This means that trade unions have mainly designed their annual reports to suit their own needs. But it also raises the question of why yearly reports are compiled at all. One reason is to enable review and control in a democratic organisation. Members have appointed a board to manage the organisation's activities and administer its resources. The board must submit a report on its actions, allowing members to review how the assignment has been carried out. The annual report gives members the insight they need for democratic control over the association.
A second reason concerns the national level of the organisations and relates to information management and knowledge dissemination. Some things are practical to have gathered in one easily accessible place and things that are essential for everyone in the organisation to be aware of and have access to, such as collective agreements, statements on investigations, judgments in the Labor Court, political initiatives that directly or indirectly affect the labour market, the state of the national economy and its prospects, and so on.
In the early years of the trade union movement, it was often emphasised how important it was for members to know what other members in different places were doing. Trade union activity reports could contribute to a sense of unity and trust in what the joint organisation could achieve by disseminating information about what had been accomplished nationwide or internationally. However, they could also publish more general information that was otherwise not easily obtainable for purely practical reasons. This aspect of information dissemination characterised the annual reports of the unions and the trade union confederation for a long time. They can contain a wealth of information that, strictly speaking, is of no real significance for the democratic control of elected representatives.
Taken together, these two reasons for producing an activity report mean that they are both stable over time and subject to considerable change over time. The review aspect provides a stable core of information that can always be expected to be found. The information dissemination aspect offers a great deal of variation, although certain elements remain unchanged for a considerable period.
Over time, significant differences can thus arise in the content of activity reports for trade unions and the trade union confederation. However, certain elements can be expected to be found throughout their entire period of activity. These include
- Who has held positions of trust and represented the union in various bodies
- Financial reporting
- Membership development
- Agreements and negotiations
Some elements can be expected to be found in virtually all reports. These include
- International cooperation
- Studies
Other elements can be expected to be found frequently. These include
- Opinions on investigations by various bodies
- An assessment of the economic situation in the industry
The significant differences arise not primarily because the issues addressed change, but because of changes in the amount of information published. Negotiations and conflicts, for example, are always addressed; however, the presentation of activities was considerably more detailed in the past. At that time, it was possible to provide extensive reports in tabular form on each local negotiation and its results. Another example is collective agreements. For a long time, it was common for the full texts of the central agreements to be printed in the annual reports, and these could also include complete accounts of local collective agreements. Similarly, the Labour Court's judgments in cases where the union was a party could be published. In each area covered by the annual report, the amount of information was considerably greater during much of the 20th century than it is today. The level of detail began to decline significantly in the 1980s.
So much for what one might expect to find in an annual report, the wealth of information means that one can also expect to find a great deal that one would not have thought to see, such as course descriptions for study activities and the names of participants and scholarship recipients. But there are also things that one would not expect to learn from the annual report. The report focuses on what has been done and the results achieved, rather than the background and discussions that led to these decisions. For that, you must look to other sources, preferably minutes or correspondence series in the archives of the respective organisations.