A wolf in a sheep's clothing? Active employers and public sector industrial conflict in Denmark

Industrial relations in Denmark are normally perceived as relatively consensual and the bal-ance of power between employers and trade unions relatively equal compared to most other European countries. Major conflicts are rare and it is atypical for the Government to end a deadlock of a collective bargaining round with legislative intervention, although it happens roughly every ten years.

The 2013 bargaining round in the public sector was one of these rare occasions. An industrial conflict in a major public sector bargaining area came to an end by a legislative intervention after both negotiation and arbitration had failed. The industrial conflict was a lockout without any prior strike or strike-warning. Not only in Denmark, but also everywhere else where collective bargaining takes place in the public sector, it is extremely rare that public employers decide to lockout employees without a prior call for a strike – and in several countries it is not even legally possible for the public sector employers to do so. It is furthermore noteworthy, that this rare and extreme Government act took place in Denmark, considering the above mentioned general industrial relations.

The conflict was connected to a remarkable demand from employers to reduce the sector-level collective agreement on working time down to a few lines and a winding–up all existing local agreements on working time for teachers in the Folkeskole, which is the Danish munici-pal primary and lower secondary school (municipal employers’ demands) and in most post-15 education institutions (state employers’ demand). The aim, it was argued, was to strength-en the management prerogative and facilitate the implementation of a large scale reform of the Folkeskole. Only after failed arbitration, four weeks of lock-out and parliamentarian intervention the employers’ demands were met.

So how come that the public employers, which at several occasions have concluded path-breaching deals with trade unions, and never have been seen as especially tough, suddenly used the hardest tool from the bargaining tool-box? Have they changed or have they for long been a wolf in a sheep’s closing, waiting to undress?

In the paper several dimensions of the 2013 collective bargaining process and outcome are addressed in four research questions: Firstly, the collective bargaining round is put into con-text. Which historical, economic, political and organisational factors explain the public em-ployers ‘actions? Secondly, do the 2013 collective bargaining round represent an extreme situation within the Danish IR-model or is it an outright break with it? Thirdly, the future per-spectives of industrial relations in the public sector will be discussed. Does the process indi-cates an important shift in power-relation and is a repetition likely – or was this a one-of ac-tion which means that everything will return to normal?

The full paper was presented at the SASE conference, Chicago, USA, July 10-12 2014.