Comparative Analysis of Danish and Swedish Industrial Relations
How did public sector industrial relations change in European countries after the crisis? This question is investigated in the anthology Public Service Management and Employment Relations in Europe. The anthology analyzes industrial relations before and after the crisis in order to investigate its impact on trade unions, on employers' organisations, on their internal relationship, on public employees and on public service. The anthology investigates 12 countries in total, and FAOS' contribution is a comparative analysis of the development in Denmark and Sweden. The chapter is written by the FAOS researchers Nana Wesley Hansen and Mikkel Mailand.
Changes in public sector employment relations (ER) have been most profound in Sweden, where an economic crisis in the 1990s was a more important driver than the post-2008 crisis. The 1990's crisis contributed to an earlier implementation of NPM and a higher degree of wage-decentralization than in Denmark. The post-2008 austerity policies have been relatively mild in both countries and have not fundamentally changed the ER-systems. Changes include in Denmark recentralization and attempts to strengthen the management prerogative - in Sweden, changes similarly include recentralization, but wage-decentralization has contrary to in Denmark continued.