Working Conditions in Sweden

Permits

Sweden is a full member of the EU.

Working hours and overtime

For feature films and tv-series your pay is usually based on a monthly salary. To get the daily pay of a monthly salary you divide the total amount with 21 working days.
The working day in Sweden is 8 hours. A shooting day has normal hours between 08.00 – 17.00 including a one-hour lunch break. The lunch break should be no later than 5 hours after start work. It's allowed and quite common to have 45 min lunch break throughout the entire shoot. So if you schedule 45 min you must add another 15 min snack break.
Working hours starts and ends at the production office, not on location/set, travel from office to set is included in the working day.
A working week consists of 40 hours and is usually divided on 5 days but can consist of as much as six days.
If you prefer/need to work 10-hour days, you are allowed to plan your shooting days as 4x10 10-hour days per week as well and by that borrow time from other days of the week. You are allowed to schedule a maximum of 10 hours per day.
You either work with 1-week planning, or 4-week planning. The 4-week planning means that you can borrow and use 4-weeks working hours (160 hours) when you plan your shooting schedule.

Overtime is paid in three different rates depending on the circumstances.

Overtime can be based on individual agreement replaced with two hours off for each hour of overtime.

Overtime can be negotiated to be included in the monthly salary.

Working on weekends/nights is allowed but you need to pay an additional pay for the following hours due to working during inconvenient hours:

The day before a work free day all work must be finished well before midnight.

You are required to encourage your team to choose a Union representative and a Safety representative where the crew can go with concerns and complaints and forward it to the production management or to the producers.

Per Diem, Living arrangements and Travels

The place where you work most part of your contract is considered as the working place no matter where in Sweden your crew normally lives in. Therefore no per diem needs to be paid for the place where you shoot most of your film. Should your film be shooting in more than one town you will need to pay for the days spent shooting there. However to get per diem the working place needs to be at least 50 km from your original working place.

It is custom to pay for hotel/apartment for team members and actors if they work away from home. Also to pay for at least one travel to and from the place of work (work start and finish), to pay for travel home 2 weekends per month is more common.

Actors & Extras

Actors working days are also 8 hours (wardrobe and makeup time excluded) per day after that they are entitled to overtime of their pay is below 9280 SEK/day. Actors should have lunch break after 5 Hours shooting (make-up and wardrobe excluded ) and the turnaround is minimum 11 H.

Extras are paid for number of shooting days. Normally between 400 – 999 SEK. If they have lines – paid up to 1'500 SEK. If extras needs to come in for fittings before their shooting day they will normally get payed 200-500 sek/fitting.

Shooting with Children

If working with minors is required you need a special permit. The rules for working with children are very strict! You apply for your permit at Arbetsmiljöverket. You need to apply minuímum of three weeks before SW. The application is free of charge.
www.arbetsmiljoverket.se

Fringes

52-56 % of the total amount to be added on all wages. This is a rough number that includes social fees, holiday payment, pension, basic insurance and so on. The exact percentage might vary a bit but 56% is a good number for counting a relevant budget.For extras you only pay 32% fringes.

Locations

Permits from the Police and from “Gatu och Fastighetskontoret” of the town where who owns the land. As soon as you need to do more than just take the camera out you need a permit.

Application to Gatukontoret is about 2000 SEK. You also pay ”Kommunteknik” to prepare arrangement of signs or closed of areas. The amount varies. Application to the police is about 800 SEK. Use of public space is about 600 SEK / location.

VAT

Most VAT is refundable for film companies. But one exception is for rental cars where only half of the VAT is refundable.

Rates

Rates + more on Per Diems, VAT and Locations

Check also the standard contract in English

Useful links and sources of Information:

There are a number of Filmpools in Sweden when working if different regions of Sweden these might come in handy. Here is a sample you will find them all on Swedish Film & TV producer's website:

The different Film pools have different spend requirements, mostly something that the producers negotiate directly with the Filmpool, but 200% of spend including filming in the region is a common requirement.