Never before have so many Danes
chosen a working life without being member of an unemployment insurance
fund and a trade union. It is a trend which could spell the beginning
of the end of Denmark’s collective bargaining model which has been
around for more than a century.
A new comprehensive analysis from the Employment Relations Research
Centre (FAOS) at the University of Copenhagen shows four in ten Danish
workers are now not members of trade unions which take part in
collective bargaining. The analysis, commissioned by the Danish
Confederation of Trade Unions, shows only half of Denmark’s workers –
54 percent – choose to be members of a trade union and an unemployment
insurance fund.
One million Danes are not organised or else they’re members of
so-called ‘yellow’ unions, which do not take part in collective
bargaining. It is young men in the private sector in particular who
turn their backs on traditional trade unions and who don’t pay into an
unemployment insurance fund.
Threat of new legislation
This trend could mean a far stricter political control of labour
market policies, say the report’s authors, FAFO researchers Jesper Due
and Jørgen Steen Madsen. Today the social partners negotiate agreements
amongst themselves to a large extent, and the so-called flexicurity
model can, according to most experts, be thanked for the flexibility in
the Danish labour market, and for the high economic safety among
workers. But the model comes under pressure when fewer join unions and
the social partners no longer can guarantee that agreements they reach
are for the common good of most workers. Then politicians might have to
intervene and pass legislation to regulate the labour market.
The authors are both professors and labour market researchers, and
their analysis is based on their joint thesis “LO and the future of the
Danish model. Considering the challenges and society’s conditions for
LO’s development”. It was commissioned by LO ahead of the debate about
LO’s future during the confederation’s latest congress.
In the very short term though, it does not look like LO and the
social partners are loosing their influence despite the drop in union
membership. LO is expected to play a considerable part in both
negotiations and on a political level. LO and the Confederation of
Danish Employers (DA) will still play central, coordinated roles during
the coming negotiations at the start of 2012, and the new Social
Democrat-led Danish government has said three-party negotiations
between LO, DA and the state will help realise the new government’s
economic policy by increasing the labour supply and create an economic
framework for an educational lift.
A cheaper and better
confederation
This could result in a major competence reform with more adult and
further education, but negotiations could also result in a far more
limited agreement.
“So in the coming years LO does not seem to be faced with many
problems when it comes to negotiations and political influence. But in
a longer perspective we see difficulties piling up,” concludes Jesper
Due and Jørgen Steen Madsen.
Three other Danish labour market experts come to the same sombre
conclusion in a different book. In ‘Collective action – union
organisation and cross-union movement’ researchers Flemming Ibsen,
Laust Høgedahl and Steen Scheuer look at why Danish workers are moving
from unions with negotiating rights to alternative organisations or
abandoning unions altogether, and they would like to see unions develop
strategies to change this development.
Often the workers’ reasons are based on economy or values, and these
reasons must be taken into consideration when unions look to keep
existing members and recruiting new ones, say the authors. The unions
could become leaner and even more efficient, there will be more mergers
and memberships could become cheaper.
