Living and working in Denmark

Actors and institutions

Trade unions, employers’ organisations and public institutions play a key role in the governance of the employment relationship, working conditions and industrial relations structures. They are interlocking parts in a multilevel system of governance that includes the European, national, sectoral, regional (provincial or local) and company levels. This section looks into the main actors and institutions and their role in Denmark.

Public authorities involved in regulating working life

In Denmark, the government and its ministries are as a rule not involved in regulating industrial relations and working conditions. Regarding decision-making, the government is mostly involved in formulating the employment policy. The exception is regulating and monitoring the working environment (occupational health and safety), which is the province of the Ministry of Employment and its agency, the Danish Working Environment Authority. The agency contributes to the creation of safe and sound working conditions at the Danish workplaces by carrying out inspections of companies, drawing up rules on health and safety at work and providing information on health and safety at work.

The main institutions and mechanisms ensuring the enforcement of employee’s rights (the labour courts) are regulated by the social partners. The focus is on out-of-court mechanisms supplemented with a Labour Court with representatives from the social partners, state-employed judges from the Supreme Court and arbitration courts supervised by the social partners. In case of a breakdown in efforts to renew an existing collective agreement, the Public Conciliator has a right to intervene on behalf of the state.

There are three employer organisations in the public sector covering collective bargaining in the state, local government and regional government. The Agency for the Modernisation of Public Administration ( Moderniseringsstyrelsen) negotiates in the central state sector on behalf of the Ministry of Finance. Local Government Denmark (KL) is the employer association for the 98 municipalities and Danish Regions ( Danske Regioner) for the five regions in Denmark. During the important collective bargaining in the public sector, a new state employer spearheaded the negotiations with the state employees’ confederations. It was the Minister for the newly created Public Service Innovation, Ms Sophie Løhde from The Liberal Party (Venstre), who thus had her debut as a main negotiator in the central state sector.

Representativeness

The most important concept of representativeness in Denmark is mutual recognition between the social partner organisations. The system of social dialogue is based on voluntarism and is only encompassed by very little legislation. Recognition is in principal established the moment two organisations conclude a collective agreement. Within the organisations the leaders are chosen by the members. There is no legislation connected to the concept of representativeness.

More information on representativeness of the main social partner organisations can be found in Eurofound’s representativeness study of the cross-industry social partners or in Eurofound’s sectoral representativeness studies.

Trade unions

About trade union representation

Freedom of membership of an association – both the positive and the negative right – is expressed in the ‘Act on the freedom of association in the labour market’ from 1982. The law was amended in 2006, abolishing the right to closed shop agreements.

Among other European countries, the level of trade union density in Denmark 67% – which is relatively high (OECD 2014). However, the density has been steadily falling since 1996 when it was around 75%. The decline has mostly taken place among the unions of skilled and unskilled workers and clerical and commercial employees. Those are the unions under the umbrella of the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions, LO.

There are three trends explaining the decline in the membership in LO-unions. Firstly the members, including potential members, are ‘educating themselves’ into a union of a different confederation based on members with longer education. Secondly, there has always been a tendency for the young and foreign workers not to join the unions and thirdly, but not least, there is competition from the low-fee, so-called ‘yellow unions’ (politically alternative unions in relation to the traditional unions). They are not representative regarding collective bargaining, and they are based on low membership fees and individual judicial support. However, unions such as the Christian Union have increased membership steadily during the last 10 years.

Trade union membership and trade union density

Main trade union confederations and federations

Note: The table includes the three existing confederations, LO, FTF and Akademikerne, AC, and the largest and pace-setting organisations in the three confederations.

During 2018 the two largest confederations, LO and FTF, voted in their respective central board meetings to merge as of 1 January 2019. The name of the new confederation is Confederation of Danish Unions (Fagbevægelsens Hovedorganisation, FH). The merger was a result of around five years of preparation between the executives of both confederations. The outcome of the ballot was not a given beforehand. The largest LO-union, 3F – of skilled and unskilled workers – accepted a merger only in the last moment.

Employers’ organisations

About employers’ representation

It is voluntary to join an employer association. Membership includes agreement that the employer organisation concludes binding collective agreements on behalf of the member. The level of employers’ organisation density has been more or less stable over the past 10 years – around 74% measured by the number of employees covered by the member companies (DA).

Employers’ organisations – membership and density

Percentage of employees working in an establishment, which is a member of any employer organisation that is involved in collective bargaining.
* (Due, J., Madsen, J.S. and Pihl, 2010)

There are two private sector confederations and three employer organisations in the public sector. The largest employer organisation is DI, which covers one million employees, including employees abroad.

Main employer organisations and confederations

Tripartite and bipartite bodies and concertation

In Denmark, tripartite consultations normally take place on an ad hoc basis. The general process is that the government invites the main social partner organisations to discuss labour market issues or issues that have an effect on employment, such as employment policy. The degree of involvement of the social partners is in general high regardless of the government in office.

However, in autumn 2012, the newly elected government led by the Social Democrats invited the social partners to a tripartite dialogue on working time and welfare issues, which was ultimately cancelled by the government. Trade union representatives from Danish Metal insisted they would not accept any attempt to extend working time, such as abolishing two public holidays as suggested by the government. The Minister of Finance then chose to cancel the negotiations before they had started in earnest.

Politicians and the social partners judged tripartite negotiations dead for a very long time. However, in 2016 the Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen opened new tripartite negotiations, this time with a new strategy. Instead of presenting all topics to be negotiated in one package, as the Social Democrats had done (ultimately, unsuccessfully), he split the negotiations in three parts. If one failed, there were still two others to negotiate. Thus, in the spring of 2016 the government and the social partners at peak level started negotiations about how to secure faster integration of the large number of refugees from Syria, among other countries, who came to Denmark through Germany. The negotiations were successful, introducing a special immigrant benefit. The two following tripartite negotiations also an ended in an agreement, the last at the end of 2017. The last two agreement dealt with adult and further training and bringing more young people into apprenticeships. Thus, this ‘assembly line’ strategy – breaking topics into distinct stages – turned out to be successful and tripartite negotiations have survived.

The bodies mentioned below are permanent tripartite/bipartite bodies that are either set up by legislation or collective agreement, and mostly concern employment, training and work environment.

Main tripartite and bipartite bodies

Workplace-level employee representation

The main channels of employee representation at workplace level are the shop stewards and the Cooperation Committee – in the public sector, the latter is referred to as the Co-determination Committee ( MED-udvalg). These committees consist of an equal number of representatives of employees and management. The employee representatives are elected among the union members at workplace. The work environment committee, along with board member representatives, are other important channels for employee representation at workplace.

In the public sector, the Co-determination Committees incorporate the work environment; hence, it is a one-tier system opposed to a two-tier system with cooperation committees and health and safety committees (which since 2012 have been called work environment committees where they exist in the private sector). The co-influence and co-determination system is based on a framework agreement – the so-called MED-agreement. The president of the Co-determination Committees in the public sector is usually the director of the municipality or county, while the vice-president is the joint shop steward.

Workplace representation is codified by collective agreement.

Regulation, composition and competences of the bodies