45126-Invest. Qual-No111

Wage Bargainingof the employer federation. After a spell of decentralisedbargaining, with higher real wage growth and even more local drift,employers and unions took various steps. In 1987 they signed a‘declaration of intent’, jointly with government, in which theyundertook to keep Danish wage increases below the level ofDenmark’s main trading partners. More important, perhaps, was thereorganisation of bargaining jurisdictions, from several hundreds, tosome thirty, together with a concentration of employers’ associations.Central-level negotiations have entirely stopped and allbargaining takes place sectorally, with additional bargaining infirms. In addition to these shifts in the level of bargaining, there wasdecentralisation in a further sense: a shift from standard job-relatedwages to person-related pay by means of the gradual replacement ofwhat in Denmark is called the ‘normal wage’ by the ‘minimumwage’ system. Under the normal wage system the standard rates,negotiated at the sectoral or national level, cannot be improvedthrough local bargaining. Under the minimum wage system, onlyminimum pay levels are regulated through sectoral bargaining 7 . InDenmark, local bargaining takes place more or less on an annualbasis, but under a peace obligation, and takes the form of ‘pay sumbargaining’ over the ‘aggregate size of the pay rise for the group ofworkers represented by the shop steward’, leaving it to themanagement to allocate the award to individuals (Scheuer, 1997).Hence, it remains possible for management to link pay to performanceor ability, and for stewards to assert their role despite the factthat the main bargaining process takes place outside the firm. Thissystem is now also gradually making its way into the public sector.An interesting aspect of the recent bargaining rounds in Denmark isthe insertion of so-called ‘social chapters’ in addition to issues liketraining, maternity pay, leave systems and flexible working time.Following a proposal of the Public Conciliator, wage negotiationsare encouraged “to consider appropriate suggestions to further theemployment of persons who due to health problems, reducedworking ability or long term absence from the labour market, cannot7. This was originally the province of craft workers who could negotiate piecerates locally.245