Highly qualified engineers packing birdseed in bags
all day long. Teachers cutting up glossy weeklies and analysing them.
Part-time cleaning assistants forced to move elsewhere even though they
are happy in their current job. These are some of the more extreme
examples of how the Danish principle of the ‘right and duty’ of the
unemployed to work has sometimes manifested itself. On paper, this
principle of ‘right and duty’ for activating the jobless has otherwise
been a success.
It has got a lot of people out looking for work and has brought
unemployment figures down. But there are also examples showing that
activation has gone too far when it comes to the choice of jobs the
unemployed must take to keep their dole money. This is what Ove Hygum,
the Danish Social-Democrat Minister of Labour now wants to change with
his proposed labour market reform. This reform aims to do away with the
concept of ‘compulsory activation’. There is a broad political
consensus that, against a background of very low unemployment in
Denmark, there is a need for far more targeted and individual measures
for unemployed people still looking for work.
The reform does away with the requirement that an unemployed person
must be active for 75 % of the three-year activation period.
“The system must continue to build on the ‘right and duty’
principle, but in some instances the 75 % rule has become activation
for activation’s sake,” recognises Bjarne Laustsen, the Social-
Democrat spokesman for labour relations.
Instead, activation must be more tailored to an individual’s needs
and not least the local conditions in that particular part of the
country.
The local issue is particularly high on the wish list of the
right-wing opposition, who support the main principles of the
reform.
“It is very important that there is an easing of central control,”
says Knud Erik Kirkegaard, the Conservative spokesman for labour
relations.
The non-socialist parties are also demanding that private players
are afforded better opportunities to provide employment services and
activation. The right wing believe that activation needs to be
privatised in order to create an incentive for those employed in the
public sector to get the unemployed into permanent jobs.
“Today, neither the job centres nor course providers are interested
in getting the jobless into work. Their money comes from having people
in the system,” says Jens Vibjerg, the Liberal spokesman for labour
relations. The Liberals are the largest right-wing party in
Denmark.
The Social Democrats support further privatisation of activation,
but they believe that competition must be completely open, so that the
union insurance systems can also bid for such measures.
The Conservatives and Liberals have long campaigned for performance
pay to be introduced at job centres. In other words, job-centre staff
would be rewarded for the number of unemployed they can get completely
out of the system. This is also part of labour minister Ove Hygum’s
proposal currently being discussed by the parties. The country’s job
centres have already got wind of the reform and its aims, and are now
preparing for new times ahead.
