Chair, Steering Committee

Bertil Jonsson was born on July 20, 1940. He was born and brought up in Ljusdal, Hälsingland, in the northern part of Sweden.

After seven years of elementary school he started to work in the sawmill in Ljusdal. He worked there for 16 years and there he began his trade union work as a negotiator of the local section, in the beginning of the 60s.

Bertil Jonsson was also, for a couple of years, chairman of section 32 of the Swedish Wood Industry Workers’ Union.

In 1971, Bertil Jonsson began to work at the head-office of the Wood Industry Workers’ Union in Stockholm as a trade union official within the negotiation field.

At the congress of the union in 1978, Bertil Jonsson was elected Executive President of the Wood Industry Workers’ Union.

On the 1^st of February 1990 he was elected Vice-President of LO Sweden and at the LO General Council on February 2, 1994, he was elected Executive President of LO Sweden. He was re-elected Executive President at the LO Congress in 1996.

Bertil Jonsson has a long list of assignments outside LO, at national and international level. Bertil Jonsson is elected President of the Council of Nordic Trade Unions (NFS), Vice-President of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and chairman of the ICFTU Steering Committee. He is member of the board of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), the National Swedish Pension Fund – the Fourth Fund, the Labour Market Insurances (AMF) and the Insurance Company Folksam. Bertil Jonssson is also a member of the national board of the Social Democratic Party and its managing committee.