Actors and institutions in Denmark

In Denmark, the government and its ministries are as a rule not involved in regulating industrial relations and working conditions. Regarding decision-making on working life, the government’s involvement relates mostly to formulating employment policy. The exception is regulating and monitoring the working environment (occupational health and safety), which is the province of the Ministry of Employment (Beskæftigelsesministeriet, BM) and its agency, the Danish Working Environment Authority (Arbejdstilsynet). The agency contributes to the creation of safe and sound working conditions in 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 employees’ rights (the labour courts) are regulated by the social partners. The focus is on out-of-court mechanisms supplemented with the Danish Labour Court (Arbejdsretten) – with representatives from the social partners and state-employed judges from the Supreme Court – and labour arbitration courts supervised by the social partners. In the event of a breakdown in efforts to renew an existing collective agreement, the Public Conciliator (Forligsmanden) has a right to intervene on behalf of the state.

There are three employer organisations in the public sector covering collective bargaining at state, local government and regional government levels. The Agency for the Modernisation of Public Administration (Moderniseringsstyrelsen), which negotiated in the central state sector on behalf of the Ministry of Finance, was abolished in 2019 because the ministry thereby played a double role as negotiator and legislator. Instead, responsibility for collective bargaining on behalf of the state as employer was moved to the Ministry of Tax, and the Agency for the Modernisation of Public Administration was replaced by the Employee and Competence Agency (Medarbejder- og Kompetencestyrelsen), which since 2021 has conducted collective bargaining on behalf of the ministry. Local Government Denmark (Kommunernes Landsforening, KL) is the employer association for the 98 municipalities, and Danish Regions (Danske Regioner) represents the 5 regions in Denmark as an employer.

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 covered by very little legislation. Recognition is in principle 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.

About trade union representation

Freedom of membership of an association – both the freedom to join a union and the freedom not to join one – is addressed in the Act on the Freedom of Association in the Labour Market (Lov om foreningsfrihed på arbejdsmarkedet) of 1982. The law was amended in 2006, abolishing the right to closed shop agreements. Thus, joining a union is voluntary, and no workers in either the public sector or the private sector are excluded from joining a union. Priests and high-ranking officers in the armed forces have their own unions.

The level of trade union density in Denmark is relatively high compared with other European countries. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), it was 67% in 2019 (OECD, 2021).

However, union 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 Trade Union Confederation (Fagbevægelsens Hovedorganisation, FH (formerly LO)).

There are three trends explaining the decline in membership of FH/LO unions. Firstly, the members, including potential members, are ‘educating themselves’ into a union belonging to different confederations targeting members with a higher level of education. Secondly, there has always been a tendency for the young and foreign workers not to join a union, and these categories of workers are growing. And, last but not least, there is competition from the low-fee ‘yellow unions’ (unions that are politically alternative to the traditional trade union movement and not recognised as part of the collective bargaining system by either the unions or the employer organisations). They are not representative regarding collective bargaining, and they follow a model based on charging low membership fees and offering individual legal support. However, some of the alternative unions – such as Krifa, the Christian trade union – have increased their membership steadily during the past 10 years.

During 2018, the two largest confederations, the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions (Landsorganisationen i Danmark, LO) and the Confederation of Professionals in Denmark (Funktionærernes og Tjenestemændenes Fællesråd, FTF), voted to merge from 1 January 2019. The name of the new entity is the Danish Trade Union Confederation (Fagbevægelsens Hovedorganisation, FH). The merger was a result of around five years of preparation on the part of the executives of both confederations. The outcome of the ballot was not certain beforehand. The largest LO member union – the United Federation of Danish Workers (Fagligt Fælles Forbund, 3F), for skilled and unskilled workers – accepted the merger only at the last moment.

Trade union membership and density, 2010–2019

Notes: * Proportion of employees who are members of a trade union. ** Trade union membership of employees derived from the total union membership and adjusted, if necessary, for trade union members outside the active, dependent and employed labour force (i.e. retired workers, self-employed workers, students, unemployed people).

Source: OECD and AIAS, 2021

Main trade union confederations and federations

Main trade union confederations and federations

Note: The table includes the three Danish confederations, FH, Akademikerne and the smaller LH, and the largest and pace-setting organisations in FH and Akademikerne. * LO and FTF merged with effect from 1 January 2019, forming FH.
Sources: ** StatBank Denmark, LONMED2; *** StatBank Denmark, LONMED3

About employer representation

Joining an employer association is voluntary. Membership entails agreeing to the employer organisation concluding binding collective agreements on behalf of its members. There are no official figures for employer organisation density, so it is possible to provide only a rough estimate based on the little information available. This makes it impossible to pinpoint any trends. However, the density figures show that the membership percentages are very different depending on whether they are based on active employees or member establishments. Only 1% of Danish companies are large; the rest are small and medium-sized. However, large and medium-sized companies employ the majority of employees.

Employer organisation membership and density, 2012–2021 (%)

Notes: DA, Confederation of Danish Employers (Dansk Arbejdsgiverforening); ECS, European Company Survey; FA, Danish Employers’ Association for the Financial Sector (Finanssektorens Arbejdsgiverforening); n.a., information not available. * Density figures calculated based on number of full-time equivalent workers in the Danish labour market divided by number of full-time equivalent workers covered by employer organisations (DA and FA). Data are available only for 2012 and 2015. ** Density figure calculated based on aggregated numbers of companies that were members of DA (25,000) and FA (170) in 2018 divided by the total number of companies in the Danish private sector (262,186) in 2018, retrieved from Statistics Denmark. ***The relevant information appeared on the websites of these organisations in the specified years (and would have been subsequently updated for following years).

Main employer organisations and confederations

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

Main employer organisations and confederations, 2022

In Denmark, tripartite consultation normally takes 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.

In 2012, tripartite negotiations were cancelled, as there were significant disagreements between the newly elected government led by the Social Democrats and the social partners, especially the trade union representatives. Politicians and the social partners have judged tripartite negotiations a thing of the past for a very long time. However, in 2016 the Prime Minister at the time, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, started new tripartite negotiations with a new strategy. Instead of presenting all topics to be negotiated in one package, as the Social Democrats had done with poor results, the negotiations were divided into three parts. If one set of negotiations failed, there were still two others to be conducted separately. The ‘assembly line’ strategy – breaking negotiations into distinct stages – turned out to be successful and tripartite negotiations were revived.

The COVID-19 crisis dramatically changed the Danish labour market in 2020, leading to the adoption of an increased number of tripartite agreements between the Danish government and the social partners aimed at protecting employees. The agreements covered a temporary wage compensation scheme for employees in the private sector and a similar comprehensive scheme to support self-employed people, an improved work-sharing scheme, financial help for trainees, apprentices and firms, a temporary short-time working scheme in the private sector and temporary assistance for families with children sent home from school due to COVID-19.

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

Main tripartite and bipartite bodies

The main channels for employee representation at workplace level are shop stewards and cooperation committees; the form of the latter that operates in the public sector 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 from the union members in the workplace. Work environment committees and employee board members are other important channels for employee representation in the workplace.

In the public sector, co-determination committees also concern themselves with the work environment and hence a one-tier system operates, as opposed to a two-tier system of cooperation committees and health and safety committees (which since 2012 have been called work environment committees in the private sector). The co-influence and co-determination system is based on a framework agreement, the MED (co-determination committee) agreement. The president of a co-determination committee in the public sector is usually the director of the municipality or region, while the vice-president is usually the joint shop steward.

Workplace representation is codified by collective agreement.

Regulation, composition and competences of the bodies