Lifting wages of atypical employees — the role of social partners

This article focuses on the interplay between IR‐institutions – sectoral bargaining and other sectoral joint initiatives by social partners – and atypical employment in three sectors – Industrial cleaning, construction, and hospitals – in Denmark. The three sector constitutes a pattern. Industrial cleaning is not only the sector with highest incidence of precarious employment, but also the sector where social partners have produced most initiatives to tackle precarious employment. By contrast the public hospital sector has the lowest incidences of precarious employment and has produced the fewest initiatives compared to construction and industrial cleaning.  When explaining the sector differences with regards to the level of atypical work and such worker’s wages and working conditions the IR institutions seems important. Together with the uneven coverage of the Salaried Employees Act the strength of social partners – including their union density and collective agreement coverage – seems to contribute to the sector differences, which is further underlined by precarious employment being more widespread in parts of the sectors without collective agreement coverage.

Read the full article "Lifting wages and conditions of atypical employees in Denmark—the role of social partners and sectoral social dialogue" by Trine P. Larsen and Mikkel Mailand.  Login required.