Municipal/county sector deal narrowly approved

At the end of April 2002, a new collective agreement for Denmark's municipal/county sector, arrived at through conciliation, was approved in a ballot of members of the trade unions affiliated to the KTO bargaining cartel. However, the overall margin in favour was very narrow, with the members of teachers' and nurses' unions overwhelmingly opposed, mainly due to disagreement over a new pay system being introduced in the public sector. The ballot result led to criticism from some unions of the bargaining and voting procedure.

Negotiations over a new collective agreement for the 650,000 employees of Denmark's municipal/county (local government) sector - between the joint trade union negotiating body, the Association of Local Government Employees' Organisations (Kommunale Tjenestemænd og Overenskomstansatte, KTO), and the employers' organisations, the National Association of Local Authorities in Denmark (Kommunernes Landsforening, KL), the Danish Federation of County Councils (Amtsrådsforeningen, ARF) and the Municipalities of Copenhagen and Frederiksberg (Københavns og Frederiksbergs Kommuner) - broke down in February 2002. The Official Conciliation Service (Forligsinstitutionen) was thus asked to step in, for the first time in the sector's history (DK0203101N).

The conciliator, Mette Christensen, issued her proposal for a settlement in March and it was then put to a ballot of trade union members and a vote within the relevant employers' organisations (DK0205101N). Due to the very unusual course of the negotiations, there was no certainty that the union members would approve the new agreement as they have usually done in the past.

The result of the union ballot was published on 30 April, and there was a very narrow majority in favour: 51.9% of the members of the 65 unions belonging to KTO voted 'yes' to the compromise proposal while 48.1% voted against it. Strike notices that had been issued by the unions thus lapsed .

The overall result

A total of 145,456 'yes' votes were recorded in the union ballots. With the addition of 11,568 votes based on voting in so-called 'competent assemblies' in some unions, the total number of 'yes' votes was 152,024. The number of 'no' votes recorded in ballots was 137,515 votes, plus 4,244 votes from competent assemblies, adding up to 140,755 'no' votes. Counting only the votes directly expressed by union members in ballots (ie excluding those based on competent assembly votes), the margin of approval was even narrower, with 50.5% voting 'yes'. The turn-out in the ballots was 45.8%, which was seen as disappointingly low by some union negotiators. On the employers' side, all the parties voted yes to the mediation proposal.

The new agreement now approved for the municipal/county sector guarantees: a general wage increase of 5.55% over the next three years; a real wage increase over the same period; two additional special holidays per year; and improvements in the sector's pension schemes. Of the 5.55% overall pay increase, 1.87 percentage points is reserved for financing the new decentralised and flexible wage system, Ny Løn ('New pay'), controversially being introduced in the public sector (employers' had sought 2.2 points to be used for this purpose). In addition, the agreement provides for a number of improvements for older workers, hourly-paid workers and shop stewards.

Dispute over 'New pay'

Disagreement about the application of the 'New pay' system, based on the experience since its initial introduction in April 1998 (DK9705110F), was the main cause of the dissatisfaction among members of KTO (DK0203101N). However, there was also some dissatisfaction with the perceived inflexibility of the KTO bargaining cartel which covers academically qualified staff, teachers, nurses and blue- and white-collar workers. According to the president of the Danish Confederation of Professional Associations (Akademikernes Centralorganisation, AC), Svend M Christensen - who is also vice-president of KTO - the unions have spent too much time on internal fights instead of joining in the fight against the employers.

In the bargaining prior to conciliation, it was especially unions representing teachers and educators which opposed a compromise deal on the financing of 'New pay' acceptable to other unions. As a deal required full agreement among the member unions of KTO, this compromise thus failed.

Major differences in ballot results

In this context, there were major differences between the ballot results in the individual KTO member unions, although only five unions recorded a majority against the deal. The union most opposed was the Danish Teachers' Union (Danmarks Lærerforening, DLF), with 94.55% members voting 'no' out of a total of 58,759 votes cast. 'No' votes of over 70% were also recorded in the Danish Association of Masters and PhDs (Dansk Magisterforening, DM), the Danish Nurses' Organisation (Dansk Sygeplejeråd, DSR) and the Union of Teachers in Copenhagen, while 58.2% of those voting opposed the deal in the Union of Danish Upper Secondary Teachers (Gymnasielærernes Forening, GL).

Among unions with over 8,500 members, the highest level of approval was found in the Danish Association of Social Workers (Dansk Socialrådgiverforening, DS), with 85.2% (9,391) of those voting in favour. The municipal section of the Union of Commercial and Clerical Employees (Handels- og Kontorfunktionærernes Forbund, HK/Kommunal) recorded a 'yes' vote of 80.5% (58,796). Other large unions, such as the Danish Federation of Early Childhood Teachers and Youth Educators (Forbundet af Pædagoger og Klubfolk, BUPL), the Danish Trade Union of Public Employees (Forbundet af Offentligt Ansatte, FOA), the National Union of Nursery and Childcare Assistants (Pædagogmedhjælpernes Forbund, PMF) and the Union of Social Pedagogues (Socialpædagogernes Landsforbund, SL), recorded quite comfortable majorities in favour, with BUPL having the lowest majority at 56.7%.

'Messy' voting procedures

After the votes had been counted, the voting procedures in the individual unions were criticised in some quarters as being haphazard and messy. The result issued on 30 April showed that 3,663 members of the DM union had voted 'no', but only about 2,000 members of DM work in the county/municipal sector and are thus covered by the agreement. According to the statutes of DM, all members can vote in such ballots. The rules will now be scrutinised. In FOA, 1,814 members never received the ballot papers, while 7,000 retired members who were not entitled to vote received ballot papers by post. Some members demanded a new vote, but the president of FOA (and KTO), Poul Winckler, argued that this was unnecessary as it would not change the result significantly.

Commentary

It has, of course, given cause for reflection that the margin in favour of the new municipal/county sector agreement was so narrow in KTO. KTO is - by Danish standards - a very large and diversified bargaining cartel representing 65 different trade unions which are members of all three main confederations: the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions (Landsorganisationen i Danmark, LO), the Confederation of Salaried Employees and Civil Servants in Denmark (Funktionærernes og Tjenestemændenes Fællesråd, FTF) and AC. The narrow margin in favour, in combination with the errors in ballot procedures, means that there is some uncertainty as to who actually emerged as the winner.

The narrow result and the preceding negotiations have revealed the weaknesses of a system whereby such a large number of different unions must stand together in order to obtain a bargaining result. Furthermore, the disagreement about the four-year-old 'New pay' system indicates that it should be used in a more differentiated way from occupation to occupation. A consequence of the problems over the new agreement could be to split up the KTO bargaining cartel into occupational fields, within which the members of the participating unions would have more in common. It is mainly the unions representing teachers and nurses which have demanded new bargaining procedures which can set them free to take industrial action independently without first having to go through internal disputes with unions representing quite different occupations.

An alternative to the current joint bargaining through KTO could be for some of the dissatisfied groups to leave the bargaining cartel and negotiate individually. However, the problem with this option is that the employers' organisations negotiate together. Unions that might want to stand alone would most probably be offered the same deals that had been negotiated with KTO. The employers would never give more to unions that broke with the joint bargaining procedure, while the remaining unions in the bargaining cartel would react very negatively to a better result for those which had left. The centralised character of the bargaining system in the public sector will make it very difficult for individual organisations to secure results outside the broader 'community' of unions. (Carsten Jørgensen, FAOS)