Jesper Due

Social Dialogue in Central and Eastern Europe: Present State and Future Development

This article examines social dialogue in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and the three Baltic states. It argues that social dialogue in these countries does not measure up to the minimum criteria for effectiveness and has failed to counteract serious reductions in real wages and employment opportunities. It presents ideas on how to improve the social dialogue and suggests how these improvements might be initiated. However, many of the proposals face difficulties because of the weak organizational capacities of the state and especially of the social partners. It is therefore unlikely that these countries will be capable of substantially improving the social dialogue using their own resources; this would require more forceful intervention by the European Union.

The Danish Model of Industrial Relations: Erosion or Renewal?

The Danish model represents one of the most solidly-based industrial relation (IR) systems in Europe, and is today internationally regarded as an exemplar owing to its effective combination of flexibility and security in labour-market regulation. But in an increasingly globalized world even this model has come under pressure. The pressure comes from three different directions: (1) from EU regulation; (2) from the national political system; and, (3) from the parties at enterprise level. The organized or centralized decentralization of the collective bargaining system that was seen as the answer to the increased competitive pressure of internationalization would appear to have reached its limit and to have been replaced by a trend towards multi-level regulation. Whether this trend will lead to renewal or erosion of the Danish model will be revealed over the coming years. There are signs that indicate the models continued robustness, but there are also signs of weakening. The outcome is not only of national interest, but also has international relevance, since Denmark can be seen as the IR model par excellence. As a critical case the development of the Danish model is an indicator of the traditional IR systems future prospects in general.

Challenging Scandinavian employment relations: the effects of new public management reforms

Building on the convergence/divergence approach, this paper examines whether recent new public management (NPM) inspired reforms entailing inter alia cutbacks in the public sector, marketisation and management by performance measures have had significant implications for service provision and employment relations in the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish public sector. In this paper, we argue that although differences exist across the Scandinavian countries, it is evident that they have managed to adopt and implement NPM-inspired reforms without dismantling their universal welfare services and strong traditions of collective bargaining in the public sector. However, this restructuring is taking its toll on the work environment.

The survival of the Danish model : a historical sociological analysis of the Danish system of collective bargaining

Part 1 A theoretical basis for the analysis of industrial relations - the development of institutions: the end of institutions? Part 2 The Danish system of collective bargaining - the origins of the Danish system negotiation rules and concatenation the third actor structural stagnation. Part 3 Centralized decentralization - complementary concepts: degrees of centralization a surge in structural development towards the year 2000.

Phases and dynamics in the development of EU industrial relations regulation

In this article the authors discuss whether it is possible to identify the existence of a European IR-system. They try to identify important phases and dynamics in the emergence of what is termed the European IR-model. It is argued that traditional IR-theory should be combined with theories which allow more extensive consideration of politological and institutional phenomena when analysing IR developments at pan-European level.

Bargaining in the crisis - a comparison of the 2010 collective bargaining round in the Danish and Swedish manufacturing sectors

The economic crisis weighed heavily on the 2010 collective bargaining rounds in the Danish and Swedish manufacturing sectors — the pattern-setting sectors in both countries. This article analyses and compares the bargaining rounds from agenda-setting to signing, pointing to the significant differences in bargaining structures, processes and output. On the whole, the crisis seems to have had little effect on the Danish bargaining system due to a strong centralization on the employer side through the Confederation of Danish Industries, union moderation and the coordination of bargaining areas by Denmark’s mediation institution. Conversely, the bargaining round in Sweden puts a question-mark over the viability of the whole Swedish bargaining system. Union coordination was shattered when the white-collar unions broke ranks and concluded agreements before the LO unions. But more importantly, Teknikföretagen — the biggest employers’ federation — quit the Industrial Agreement after the negotiations and, once again, Swedish social partners are being forced to readjust the procedural framework for collective bargaining. La crise économique a lourdement pesé sur les rounds de négociation collective 2010 dans les secteurs manufacturiers danois et suédois, qui sont les secteurs qui donnent le ton dans les deux pays. Cet article analyse et compare les rounds de négociation, depuis la fixation de l’agenda jusqu’à la signature, en soulignant les différences significatives dans les structures de négociation, les processus et les résultats. Dans l’ensemble, la crise semble avoir eu peu d’effet sur le système de négociation danois en raison de sa forte centralisation du côté des employeurs, par le biais de la confédération des industries danoises, mais aussi de la modération syndicale et de la coordination des domaines de négociation par l’institution de médiation danoise. À l’inverse, le round de négociations en Suède conduit à s’interroger sur la viabilité de l’ensemble du système de négociation suédois. La coordination syndicale a été brisée lorsque les syndicats des employés ont rompu les rangs et conclu des accords avant les syndicats ouvriers. Mais il y a plus important encore: après les négociations, la plus importante fédération d’employeurs, Teknikföretagen, a dénoncé l’accord sur le développement industriel et la formation des salaires; une fois de plus, les partenaires sociaux suédois sont forcés de réadapter le cadre procédural de la négociation collective. In Dänemark und Schweden hat die Wirtschaftskrise die Kollektivverhandlungen des Jahres 2010 im produzierenden Gewerbe — in beiden Ländern die Sektoren mit Vorbildfunktion — schwer belastet. In diesem Artikel werden die Verhandlungsrunden, von der Festlegung der Tagesordnung bis zur Unterzeichnung, analysiert und verglichen und die wesentlichen Unterschiede der Verhandlungsstrukturen, Verfahren und Ergebnisse dargestellt. In Dänemark scheint die Krise insgesamt aufgrund der starken Zentralisierung auf Arbeitgeberseite durch den Verband der Dänischen Industrie, der Zurückhaltung der Gewerkschaften und der Koordinierung der Verhandlungsbereiche durch die dänische Mediationsstelle nur wenig Einfluss auf das Verhandlungssystem gehabt zu haben. In Schweden hingegen wurde in dieser Verhandlungsrunde der Fortbestand des gesamten schwedischen Kollektivverhandlungssystems in Frage gestellt. Die gewerkschaftliche Koordinierung wurde zunichte gemacht, als die Angestelltengewerkschaften ausscherten und noch vor den LO-Gewerkschaften Vereinbarungen abschlossen. Von noch größerer Bedeutung war jedoch, dass Teknikföretagen — der größte Arbeitgeberverband — nach den Verhandlungen mit der Begründung aus dem Tarifvertrag ausgestiegen ist, dass die Vereinbarung ihr Ziel der Sicherung der Wettbewerbsfähigkeit verfehlt habe. Die schwedischen Sozialpartner müssen so wieder einmal den Verfahrensrahmen für Kollektivverhandlungen neu justieren.

Employer Associations and Unions in the Public Sector

Comparative and international industrial relations have been one of the major growth industries throughout the 1990s (Bamber and Lansbury, 1998; Ferner and Hyman, 1998; Van Ruysseveldt and Visser, 1996; Hyman and Ferner, 1994, among others). One amazing feature of these more recent trends has been the fact that public sector labor or employment relations have not played any major role in this comparative analysis although different kinds of information have been available from national levels and pressures for change and modernization have been increasing in all industrialized countries.

Multi-track approach to public-sector restructuring in Europe: impact on employment relations; role of the trade unions

The article discusses a) restructuring trends in Europes public sector (in an employment relations perspective), b) the response of the trade unions to this process, and c) the overall impact of these developments on employment relations in the sector. We present an analysis emphasising the differences in the regulatory systems applied to public-sector restructuring processes in the EU Member States, arguing that there are significant variations in the development dynamics in employment relations, and, further, that these dynamics can be traced to at least three different regulatory regimes. The first regime of the three posited regimes emerged from the unique pattern of development observed in the UKs public sector, featuring large-scale privatisation schemes, the introduction of elements of competition and new forms of management. The second type of regime is evident in the Nordic countries, in the Netherlands and - albeit in modified form - in Italy, characterised by a certain measure of restructuring of the public-sector labour market, and based largely on co-operation between public-sector employers and the trade unions. The third type of regime is represented by Germany and France, with their independent regulatory systems in which centralism and sets of rules are paramount, with very few changes in the general pattern of employment relations. While identifying the significant variations listed above, we also argue that a common trend is evident in the EU Member States: a trend towards centralised decentralisation of relations on the public-sector labour market. Our study suggests that, viewed in a broad West European perspective, decentralisation - despite the many attempts to achieve it and despite its adoption, in principle at least, by politicians and the social partners - has been on a modest scale. This is clearly evident if decentralisation is considered in relation to wage-development. The tight budgetary constraints felt by West European governments may well be the single determining factor in what can be regarded as rather rigid control, at centralised level, of the framework for wage development in Western Europe. Admittedly, collective agreements can be negotiated and concluded at decentralised level - but preferably within the framework determined at centralised level.