From large-scale industrial conflict to establishment of a maternity fund - is the Danish model in a process of dismantlement or innovation?

Book by Jesper Due & Jørgen Steen Madsen

The book sets a framework for a period in the era/history of the Danish collective bargaining model that started with the complicated bargaining process in 1998 that ended up in major industrial disputes and subsequently political intervention to stop the conflict. The book ends with the more peaceful, but not less complicated negotiations, in 2004 when the establishment of a common equalisation scheme - in the form of a maternity fund - became a reality.

The special Danish system of labour market regulation - the Danish model - with its high degree of self-regulation through the social partners - is put under growing pressure that challenges the continued ability of this model for creating effective and legitimate solutions. The book reveals the triple pressure - from the European Union, from the Government and from the enterprises - that is changing the system as we have known it until now. The question is whether the Danish model will be able to adapt to these changes and the new context or whether it is on the retreat and will eventually dwindle away.

The book is a sociological analysis that uncovers the complicated game of formal and informal relations between the social partners in connection with the collective bargaining rounds in the big sectors of the labour market covered by the two big central organisations, the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) and the Confederation of Danish Employers (DA) in 1998, 2000 and the negotiations in year 2004. It is a guided tour in the nerve center of the Danish model and thus contributes to a documentation of bargaining processes of vital social importance in a field that has never been highlighted before.

The original title of the book is: Fra storkonflikt til barselsfond. Den danske model under afvikling eller fornyelse.

DJØF Publishing, Copenhagen, January 2006.