Dealing with the flaws in Danish child and elder care provision: Social partners’ actions and initiatives at company level
Based on a survey with 1.618 managers and 1.169 employees and 7.877 shop stewards under the largest Danish trade union confederation LO conducted in 2010, this paper explores how management and shop stewards deal with the work-life balance challenges faced by Danish parents and carers for older people in terms of responding to their individual work-life balance requests and developing company based responses to ease employees’ reconciliation of work and care-giving. The data suggests that while work-life balance issues are commonly debated and negotiated within Danish companies, employees typically turn to management when they struggle to juggle work and care-giving and less so their shop steward. However, interesting variations exist. Whilst an almost equal share of male and female shop stewards deal with work-life balance requests from working parents and carers for older people on a day-to-day basis, slightly more female than male managers experience that employees turn to them with such issues. Also when work-life balance issues are up for local bargaining do gender play a role and interestingly, it is typically the male shop steward who takes the initiative and sign local agreements on such issues. These results are particularly interesting as within much of the literature, work-life balance issues are often associated with women. It is therefore expected that these topics would be more prevalent among female shop stewards and managers and that female shop stewards would initiate negotiations and sign agreements on these issues.