Government employers in Sweden, Denmark and Norway: The use of power to control wage and employment conditions (original) (raw)

Bringing the Unions Back In: Wage Bargaining Coordination and Institutional Renewal in Sweden

ABSTRACT Declining unionizations rates and the decentralization of wage bargaining have reduced the importance of organized labour in the political process. For some, this decline seems irreversible and the best trade unions can hope for is to be co-opted by governments or employers in'devil's pacts'. Over the last few years, however, some European trade union confederations have sought to reverse this trend by enhancing interconfederal coordination in wage bargaining demands.

Centralised wage bargaining and structural change in Sweden

European Review of Economic History, 2003

There is a general consensus among scholars that centralized wage bargaining played a key role in the ability of Sweden to maintain wage moderation in the early post-WW II period. Conventional wisdom suggests that it worked through one of two mechanisms; internalization of the negative externalities associated with excessive wage settlements or implicit contracts that favoured cooperation between capital and labour over conflict. We contend, instead, that centralized wage bargaining was introduced because Swedish firms and unions adopted the Rehn-Meidner plan. In this environment, centralized wage bargaining was used to facilitate wage compression from below and promote labour release. Wage moderation then was a result of shifts in the labour supply. In the final section of the paper we argue that excessive wage compression in the 1970s sapped the morale and effort of skilled workers, pushed down productivity and profits and eventually led to the demise of centralized wage determination.

The Employers in the Swedish Model The Importance of Labour Market Competition and Organisation

Arbetsrapport, 2005

The way the labour market functions is a crucial factor in any analysis of the Swedish model. Full employment contributed to the growth of what were probably the two most important institutions in this model: centralised negotiations between the social partners and, secondly, the Rehn-Meidner model, involving pay policies based on solidarity with the low-paid. Here, we have examined the role of the employers in the rise, application and fall of the centralised bargaining model. In this respect, the Swedish Metal Trades Employers' Association (VF), the largest and most important employer organisation in the peak association SAF, was the actor whose interests eventually led to the model's demise. The principal cause was discontent over the way this bargaining model worked in practice. The engineering industries felt their interests were being neglected in the giant employer collective. This empirical investigation into an employer organisations's internal actions, combinin...

The labor market regimes of Denmark and Norway - One Nordic model?

Journal of Industrial Relations

The literature on the Danish and Norwegian labor market systems emphasizes the commonalities of the two systems. We challenge this perception by investigating how employers in multinational companies in Denmark and Norway communicate with employees on staffing changes. We argue that the development of ‘flexicurity’ in Denmark grants Danish employers considerably greater latitude in engaging in staffing changes than its Nordic counterpart, Norway. Institutional theory leads us to suppose that large firms located in the Danish setting will be less likely to engage in employer-employee communication on staffing plans than their Norwegian counterparts. In addition, we argue that in the Danish context indigenous firms will have a better insight into the normative and cognitive aspects to flexicurity than foreign-owned firms, meaning that they are more likely to engage in institutional entrepreneurialism than their foreign-owned counterparts. We supplement institutional theory with an act...

Sweden: collective bargaining under the industry norm

2019

Sweden is a small market economy, with ten million inhabitants, dominated by large export-oriented transnational companies. Between 1995 and 2018 the export share of GDP increased from 38 to 47 per cent. Sweden has been a member of the European Union (EU) since 1995 but is still able to run its own monetary policy as the country has not entered the euro zone. The Social Democrats have been the governing party for long periods, in 1932-1976, 1982-1990, 1994-2006 and since 2014; in the second and third periods, however, they have initiated or supported many neoliberal reforms (for instance, a substantial share of tax-fi nanced schools, child care and elderly care are outsourced to private companies). Sweden has the most socially segregated union movement in the world, with separate blue-collar and white-collar national unions and confederations. There is a similar pattern in the other Nordic countries, but not as consistently as in Sweden. Like Denmark and Finland, two other Nordic countries with a Ghent system, Sweden has a high but declining union density (see Table 28.1). The substantial increase in union unemployment contributions in 2007-2013 partly eroded the Ghent system as an instrument for membership recruitment, particularly regarding blue-collar unions, which imposed the highest contributions. While in 2000 blue-collar union density was higher than white-collar density, the opposite has been the case since 2008. The density of employers' associations and the coverage of collective agreements remain stable at a high level. Table 28.1 Principal characteristics of collective bargaining in Sweden Key features Actors entitled to collective bargaining Trade unions and employers' associations Important bargaining levels The workplace and the industrial level combined Favourability principle / derogation possibilities There is some degree of company-level discretion regarding agreements at the industry level Collective bargaining coverage (%) Collective bargaining coverage remains almost stable: it fell slightly from 93% in 2005 to 89% in 2017 Extension mechanism (or functional equivalent) No extension mechanisms or functional equivalents are applied Trade union density (%) Union density decreased from 81% in 2000 to 68% in 2018 Employers' association rate (%) The organisational rate of the employers' associations increased from 83% in 2000 to 88% in 2017. Source: Kjellberg 2019a.

10 The Battle over a Fair Share: The Creation of Labour Market Institutions in Norway

2018

Thomas Hobbes is an appealing starting point for a discussion on how power is institutionalized in society. According to Hobbes, the state of nature contains no sustainable foundation for peace and society. It offers man only fear and a solitary life and leaves him in a state of war. For Hobbes, and for many political philosophers after him, the solution to an end to this war, created by nature, was for man to enter into a social contract or agreement, in which power and wealth could be shared. The institutions of society can be regarded as such a social contract. Institutions rest partly on power, partly on the acceptance and support of members of society. Their purpose is to create peace and order and to distribute benefits and burdens. When the institutions fail to fulfil these ends, there is a risk that society falls back into a state of war. Norway was one of the first countries in Europe to pass a labour law regulating industrial action. The Act relating to labour disputes of ...

BEFORE THE BREAKDOWN OF THE SALTSJÖBADEN SPIRIT OF LABOUR MARKET COOPERATION the swedish employers’ confederation and workplace democracy In the 1960s

Scandinavian Journal of History, 2019

The 1976 Swedish landmark law on workplace democracy, Medbestämmandelagen (MBL) , has traditionally been regarded as a victory of social democracy over recalcitrant employers. In contrast, this article shows how, in fact, before the law, the Swedish Employers' Confederation (SAF) was the main driver behind Swedish research on work life reform, and the main promoter of employer-union dialogue on the matter. Crucially, in the 1960s, SAF endorsed the internationally pioneering thinking of economist Eric Rhenman, who argued that conflict within the firm between managers and unions was unavoidable, healthy, and could be good for business if framed in a productive manner. Today, this line of management thinking is termed the Scandinavian Cooperative Advantage. However, in the early 1970s, Swedish social democracy radicalized abruptly. The SAF board initially interpreted the new radicalism as a masquerade to appease activists. SAF assumed that, behind the scenes, the Swedish spirit of consensus-oriented labour market dialogue would prevail, as it had since the 1938 Saltsjöbaden agreement. And assuredly, the actual effects of the MBL law proved to be considerably less radical than advertised, and broadly compatible with Rhenman's thinking. Still, social democracy's new ideological rhetoric helped prompt SAF's late 1970s shift from cooperation to conflict.