Mikkel Mailand

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 common European flexicurity principles: How a fragile consensus was reached:

This article analyses the decision-making process underlying the adoption of common EU flexicurity principles. Supporters of the initiative succeeded in convincing the sceptics one by one; the change of government in France and the last-minute support of the European social partner organizations were instrumental in this regard. However, the critics succeeded in weakening the initially strong focus on the transition from job security to employment security and the divisions between insiders and outsiders in the labour market. In contrast to some decision-making on the European Employment Strategy, coalitions seem to have played only a minor role in the flexicurity process, although some actors joined forces in their attempts to influence the outcome.

Public service employment relations in an era of austerity: The case of Denmark

This article analyses the impact of the economic crisis on the public sector in Denmark. It first examines the overall public sector responses and presents local case studies, before offering a comparative perspective with other Nordic countries. The article concludes that responses to the crisis in Denmark mostly involve ‘resetting recent reform’. The crisis has affected on job levels and employment relations, but other drivers are also important. Analysis at the local level reveals that the reduction in job levels is as much an expression of the implementation of pre-crisis reforms and demographic change as a manifestation of a direct crisis impact. The moderate impact of the crises on public sector reforms is also found in Norway, Finland and Sweden.

Striking a balance? Flexibility and security in collective bargaining

Often neglected in flexicurity studies is the question of how collective bargaining contributes to the development of flexicurity, despite the continued resilience of this form of regulation in many European countries. The article compares sector-level bargaining and flexicurity in the printing and electrical contracting industries of Denmark, Spain and the UK to assess this link. In line with prior research, the article finds that Danish agreements contribute significantly to flexicurity. Somewhat against conventional expectations, however, are findings in the UK and Spain. In the UK, agreements contribute significantly despite a hostile context for collective bargaining. In Spain, due to the heavy influence of legislation the contribution is more modest but nevertheless notable. This overall finding gives strong evidence for the proposed link. The article goes on to discuss if a positive contribution is facilitated by certain institutional and relational conditions.

Delivering Employability in a Vanguard ‘Active’ Welfare State: The Case of Greater Copenhagen in Denmark

Denmark has been regularly cited as a leading example of the ‘active’ welfare state. Regional and local governance and delivery structures have been crucial to the implementation of Denmarks strategies to improve the employability of unemployed people. In this paper we trace the development, implementation, and effectiveness of regional and local labour-market structures in Denmark, particularly focusing on the countrys largest region—Greater Copenhagen. Drawing on interviews with key stakeholders and case-study research, we critically analyse the performance of: (a) the regional structures that have, until recently, provided the main framework for planning employability strategies; and (b) emerging frameworks for local-authority-led employability services. We argue that Denmark has successfully established effective regional governance structures, which have included employers, trade unions, and other stakeholders in the planning of provision for job seekers, while allowing for the tailoring of employability services to reflect the dynamics of local labour markets. However, there remain concerns that recent reforms that effectively dismantle regional structures in favour of more localised governance will threaten the capacity of future employability programmes to secure the buy in of stakeholders and respond to changing labour-market conditions.

Austerity measures and municipalities - the case of Denmark

Danish municipalities have gone through a number of austerity-related government initiatives with consequences for job levels and public services. Moreover, the ‘regulation mechanism’, which ties public sector wages to wage development in the private sector, has worked as an indirect austerity measure leading to a quasi-pay freeze during the public sector collective bargaining rounds in 2011 and 2013. It is difficult, however, to isolate crisis-related consequences from other factors such as demographic development, outsourcing and pre-crisis reform. Social dialogue has played a very limited role in relation to the direct austerity measures, though case studies show that social dialogue at the local level has played a role in the implementation of austerity and restructuring measures. In the education area, working time was removed from the local bargaining agenda after a lock-out and government intervention in the 2013 bargaining round, but beyond this area no major changes in social dialogue institutions have taken place.

Proactive employers and teachers’ working time regulation: Public sector industrial conflicts in Denmark and Norway

Public sector industrial relations in Denmark are normally perceived as relatively consensual, and as a ‘model employer’ country with a strong collective bargaining tradition it is one of the countries where unilateral regulation could be least expected. However, in 2013, a lockout without any prior strike or strike-warning in the bargaining area for primary and lower secondary education only, came to an end through legislative intervention. The article includes three main arguments. First, the government and the public employers took these drastic steps because various factors created a rare ‘window of opportunity’ for them. Second, the reason a Norwegian industrial conflict in 2014 with a very similar point of departure ended very differently was first and foremost that the Norwegian process was not embedded in politics and policy reform to the same extent as the Danish process. Third, the Danish case shows that Denmark might not have escaped the trend towards unilateralism seen across Europe.

Slowing down Social Europe? The struggle over work and employment regulation

The present article discusses whether the strengthening of the regulation‐sceptical actors during the 2000s has affected the scope and content of EU‐level regulation in two work‐and‐employment‐related areas, and the role coalitions have played in the decision‐making processes. In the employee involvement area, the pro‐regulation forces still appeared able to get new regulation adopted and to prevent unwanted regulation from being adopted. In the employment policy area, a few examples of successful attempts by the regulation‐sceptical actors to slow down Social Europe were found, but these were fewer than could be expected. One explanation for this relatively weak impact might be that the Commissions search for legitimacy in order to be re‐elected functions as an ‘automatic stabiliser’. Contrary to studies of previous processes, no solid coalitions were found in any of the cases analysed, although several actors took positions as expected.

Formulating European work and employment regulation during the pre-crisis years: Coalition building and institutional inertia

This article discusses whether the pre-crisis political right-turn in the European Union (EU) has had an impact on the development of European work and employment regulation. It finds that although pro-regulation actors have been weakened in the year leading up to the crisis, the expected weakening of Social Europe is only seen in a minority of the eight cases of EU-level work and employment regulation analysed. It is argued that two mechanisms can help explain this weaker than expected impact: successful resistance from pro-regulation actors and a certain form of organizational inertia linked to the actor’s search for legitimacy, especially the Commission’s need for a stronger social profile in order to be reappointed. Moreover, it is argued that stable coalitions have only played a role in some of the cases. The coalitions in action seem less stable and active than previous studies indicate.

Lifting wages and conditions of atypical employees in Denmark-the role of social partners and sectoral social dialogue: Lifting wages and conditions of atypical employees

The article focuses on IR†institutions and atypical employment in three sectors in Denmark. It demonstrates that industrial cleaning with precariousness being widespread shows most social partner responses followed by construction and then hospitals with fewest responses and problems. Despite these social dialogue initiatives, cross†sectoral variations of precariousness continue to exist.