Transport employers' organisations amalgamate

From 1 January 1999, the various employers' organisations within the Danish transport industry are part of the same organisation - AHTS, the second-largest member of the Danish Employers' Confederation (DA). In the long term, this amalgamation may be seen as the first step towards a single organisation for the service sector, for which there are currently two large associations within DA - AHTS and DHS_._

From 1 January 1999, the Danish Haulage Contractors' Employers' Association (Vognmandsfagets Arbejdsgiverforening, VA), the Danish Road Haulage Association (Danske Vognmænd, DV) and the Association of Danish Export Hauliers (Foreningen af Danske Eksportvognmænd, FDE) are gathered in a single organisation. The background to the amalgamation was a debate on how to ensure optimal safeguarding of both industrial policy interests and employers' policy interests in the transport sector (DK9806175N). The three organisations' executive committees agreed that the strongest possible position in the area of employers' policy would be achieved by an overall affiliation to the Employers' Federation for Trade, Transport and Service (Arbejdsgiverforeningen for Handel, Transport og Service, AHTS). AHTS is the second-largest organisation affiliated to the Danish Employers' Confederation (Dansk Arbejdsgiverforening, DA), and represents companies whose paybill makes up some 8% of the total paybill of firms in the area covered by DA. To handle the transport sector's industrial policy interests, a brand-new organisation has been created, Danish Transport and Logistics (Dansk Transport og Logistik, DTL). DTL is not affiliated to AHTS, which is strictly an employers' federation.

The 1998 collective bargaining round and the resulting general industrial dispute in the private sector (DK9805168F) indicated that the organisational structure on the employers' side is in need of adjustments if DA is to be able to continue to function as an overall bargaining coordinator (DK9807178F). DA's largest member organisation, the Confederation of Danish Industries (Dansk Industri, DI), has become so large - with 52% of the total paybill of the companies in the area covered by DA - that the structure has become unbalanced. These conditions put the amalgamation of the employers' organisations in the transport sector into perspective.

With a new single employers' federation, the haulage trade will have an overall, uniform set of collective agreements and, furthermore, individual firms of hauliers will be better protected financially in industrial dispute situations and will constitute a joint bargaining force in relation to their main bargaining counterpart, the General Workers' Union (Specialarbejderforbundet i Danmark, SiD). In SiD, the new organisation is also regarded as an advantage, even though it strengthens the employer side and makes it difficult to play the employers off against each other. In Denmark's relatively centralised bargaining system, it is an advantage for both parties in transport to have a large overall collective agreement area, which will act as a counterweight to the dominant industrial area, although it may not be able to match it.

The long-term perspective, which has gradually acquired increasing attention among employers in this area, is an amalgamation of AHTS with DA's third-largest member organisation, Danish Commerce and Service (Dansk Handel & Service, DHS), which covers some 7.5% of the paybill in the DA area. Such an amalgamation would result in the creation of a new "central organisation for the service sector," which could cover both industrial policy interests and employer policy interests and which, in DA, could match the largest organisation, DI, to a much greater extent.