Political intervention ends nurses' dispute

In April 1999, the members of the Danish Nurses' Organisation (DSR) rejected the new collective agreement for the county and municipal sector, owing to dissatisfaction with the pay increases involved. When subsequent efforts at concilation failed, an industrial dispute started on 13 May. Within a week, the government decided to introduce a bill to put an end to the dispute by giving legislative status to the rejected agreement. The bill was passed by parliament on 21 May.

In a ballot whose results were released in April 1999, the members of the Danish Nurses' Organisation (Dansk Sygplejeråd, DSR) rejected the new general collective agreement for employees of counties and municipalities negotiated by the trade union bargaining cooperation body, the Association of Local Government Employees' Organisations (Kommunale Tjenestemænd og Overenskomstansatte, KTO), as well as the specific agreement within this framework negotiated by the parties in the healthcare sector (DK9903114F). In the ballot, more than 60% of the nurses voted "no" to the agreements (DK9904120N), handing a defeat to the majority of members of the DSR executive who, headed by the presidentJette Søe, had recommended the KTO deal.

On 13 May, the public conciliator abandoned its attempts to conciliate between the counties and municipalities on one side and DSR on the other, and industrial conflict commenced with extensive protest demonstrations in the hospitals sector and the municipal health sector. The government decided on 19 May to introduce a bill to put an end to the dispute by giving legislative status to the rejected agreement. The bill was passed by a large majority in Parliament (Folketing) on 21 May, bringing to an end the one-week strike and prompting further nurses' protests in the form of work stoppages and demonstrations.

From the debates around the ballot it was evident that the reason for the nurses' "no" was dissatisfaction with pay levels, which were not changed decisively by the proposed agreement. The nurses have since the mid-1990s conducted a stubborn fight to change their pay grading, which derives from the Crown Servants Act of 1969 in which the nurses are given a lower grading than comparable groups. A strike in 1995, which was stopped by a political intervention after three weeks, did not bring a solution but did initiate a process whereby the nurses secured themselves greater pay increases than other groups of public employees through local bargaining with counties and municipalities. In 1997, the possibilities for such pay improvements were improved by a public sector pay reform (DK9705110F), in which DSR took a leading part. The pay reform means more market-based pay determination, in which a considerable part of pay is determined by local bargaining related to functions and qualifications.

By rejecting the 1999 settlement, the DSR members arguably expressed dissatisfaction with the executive board's locally-based pay strategy, because the pay increases apparently did not occur fast enough. The dispute was without prospects because of the centralised agreement system within the public sector, in which all the groups of employees bargain jointly for the entire county and municipal sector and the entire state sector respectively. Since all other groups - except the midwives - accepted the general outcomes of the KTO agreement, it was impossible for the employers to give nurses and midwives better conditions, considering that all the other organisations, which had accepted the KTO agreement, would then oppose them. Therefore, even if the dispute had lasted for three more weeks, it would probably not have changed the deadlocked situation. On this basis, the government chose to intervene swiftly, giving legal status to the rejected agreement, and thereby also prevented further increases in waiting lists due to cancelled operations and examinations.

When the nurses went into dispute, the midwives' strike was postponed for two weeks until 2 June. In this area, the parties were examining the possibility of finding extra resources in return for an increased working time flexibility, with the expectation that the dispute would also be stopped by political intervention if no agreement was reached.